later July, 2021

I have been meaning to write, but I have felt stuck and so I have used my busyness, which is not unreal, as an excuse not to sit here. Tonight, loaded with intention, I cleaned up after dinner, and opened a new “post.”

I am in West Virginia right now, which I will explain in a minute, but for now, let me tell you about my after-dinner chorus. It’s about three-quarters singing birds and insects, with a less-pronounced but definitely noteworthy 25% gunfire. #WestVirginia I love it.

I’m on a raised deck, looking out over mountains, and it is hot but not too hot. At least for me. My stemless glass has condensation mapping the wine level, and when the shooter stops to reload, I pause too, eyes contemplating the foggy (or simply hot, sleepy?) horizon, mind wishing it could translate the languages of the cacophonous trill, heart hoping…well, for many things.

Before I started writing, I reread my most recent post. Recent. It was in late May. Nearly two months ago. Since then, two more friends have been diagnosed with cancer, both ushered into fairly immediate surgeries, the boys finished school and left for camp, political discord has worsened, climate change is more pronounced than ever, and T and I finally got to move stuff to the serene weekend place we’ve long wanted and finally found.

Hence West Virginia.

Before February, I had never stepped foot in West Virginia. Wild and Wonderful has a colorful past -it seceded from, wait for it, the Confederacy- and is but 80 miles from our home in Maryland, but, to be honest, nothing drew me here, not least its substantially Red present-day persona. I swear, y’all, it might beg to rejoin the Confederacy now. 😬 Which is absurd. And yet. #FoxNews #FakeNews #AlternateRealities

If you think about it though, 80 miles is like a bad afternoon of carpool on the Beltway, it’s beautiful out here and land is plentiful, Oliver has, for years, beseeched us to “Get Land!,” and during Covid, that has really come to make a serious amount of sense to me.

To my immediate left, a woodpecker is going gangbusters on the new high-energy suet block I put in one of the feeders. Two other birds are chasing each other or are happily in love or soon to be and are flitting about like aerialists. Squirrels are squirreling, and the number of acorns dropping from high oak to way-below deck really makes me wonder if they’re punking me with a giant stash up there. I mean, how many acorns does that tree have?? If you sit out here and are still, these creatures do not give one crap that you’re near. Even if I go broke buying birdseed and suet and continually righting and filling my birdbath, I do.not.care. This is the best.

My fingernails are a gross, productive mishmash of unfiled and studded with Sherwin Williams’ Peppercorn, high-hiding primer, and semi-gloss Pure White. As a very devoted, skilled-yet-amateur painter, I want to tell you that Sherwin Williams paint sucks. Benjamin Moore is infinitely better in all iterations and color ways, and it is most definitely worth the increase in price those characteristics demand.

The Martinsburg Lowe’s is great. I love it, and I tell you that because and in spite of having spent 4 of 7 days per week there since June 18. BUT in paint, your options are Sherwin Williams or Valspar and, try as I might, I only have peevish things to say about them. The highest-level “Infinity” semi-gloss paint is the stuff of nightmares. I may rather pull my own dirty fingernails out than persist with this nonsense.

Last weekend, I cheated and brought from Maryland, Ben Moore primer and Aura paint. Both are like gifts from the heavens.

In any case, I have had terrible anxiety lately and, by virtue of having written this thus-far-fairly-random bit, feel immeasurably better already. #Lessons #AlwaysWrite
In college, I had a boyfriend with whom I was madly in love. I thought we would marry. If he’d asked me, I’d have said yes. Immediately. Elatedly. We broke up-for the best-but from him I took much of value, including an abiding love for The Cure and his sincere, plagued query: “What if our brains were simpler?”

Yes. Life would be easier.

Anyway, I am now realizing how much I have to tell y’all, and my god, if you join me to the end, you’re saints. Surely this all cannot be riveting, but to me, it is! I mean, do you know the transformative wonder of Ben Moore Balboa Mist in eggshell? What about adopting three teenage barn cats? What about parking your liberal-bumper-sticker-plastered car next to one with a Confederate flag and a rosary, going into Lowe’s yet again, seeing an older, leathery-tan dude wearing shorts, no shirt, suspenders that may have had Confederate flags embroidered on them, and nonetheless happily buying some Coneflowers, more (fucking) SW paint, and some new floor registers, and leaving content?

I fucking hate JD Vance and all that salt-of-the-earth rural-lands-and-peoples-are-of-the-gods shit. And yet, I am decidedly happier, and/or more relaxed, out in rural WV than I am ensconced in the rat race of DC. And I love politics. I love people. I love education and opportunity and cool folks and my friends. I do NOT love the tick I found sucking on my abdomen two weeks ago or the damn yellow jacket nest I inadvertently mowed over today (my ear is still swollen and hurts like a mofo; arm is fine), and I sure as hell don’t like most of the politics out here. But the pace is so slow. And, my god, people are nice. I am white, so that’s probably it, but…it’s still worth thinking about.

In some parts of the Eastern Panhandle, there are more PRIDE flags and Black Lives Matter signs than Trump paraphernalia. There are really, really lovely humans who love their families and work so hard. I spoke with a young Black man who told me that “yes, there is racism here like everywhere, but it’s affordable, and people are nice” and a Chinese-American woman who moved to the US twenty years ago and ended up in Hedgesville, WV, and is happy and says people are really nice and here she can afford a home, and a woman who, honestly, seemed to be every white suburban older-middle-aged-Mom-jeans lady I’d ever seen but is actually half Puerto Rican and said that “because you’re from the city, you know that my Black foreman and Latino crew are the best you can ask for,” as if I was the rare exception for whom she didn’t have to preface and disclaim and prepare. And maybe I am. I hope not.

A butterfly just landed on my chair, and neighbor shooter has reloaded and is firing to beat sixty. Tom is on his way back to Maryland, Nutmeg looks both exhausted and aghast at the fact that he is still here, and Ruthie is gallivanting around as she does. When I brought the boys to Dulles for their flight to camp, I rode the train back to parking with a guy who, even masked, looked SO MUCH like that college boyfriend that I froze and started sweating a little bit in all my remembering, and the years gone by.

The boys were beyond thrilled to return to Pine Island this summer, and yet, per life, their expectations and actual experiences seem, via letter, dissonant. Covid has really fucked so much up, and camp is no exception: there are fewer boys, distancing, parameters. My heart hurts for the kids knowing that the build up of two years’ absence could almost certainly never match the reality on the we-are-still-in-a-pandemic ground. #GetVaccinated

As always I think there is a lesson in there, irritating or shitty as it may be. A letter received from Jack today contained a stunning amount of ALL CAPS for a fifteen-year-old boy. I’m thankful he can emote. #Blessed

The birds and squirrels are quieting now; the shooter seems to be out or between rounds. Did you know that male House Finches turn bright red during breeding season? They are magnificent little beings. The sun is setting, half-used strips of painters tape are blowing lazily from their newest way-station. SW Peppercorn is actually a very nice color, as are Pure White and Tricorn Black. It’s just the paint itself, damnit; not nearly the quality of Ben Moore. And since this entire place was the color of Calamine Lotion or Terracotta or TURQUOISE, you really need some coverage, FFS.

But seriously, tomorrow I will attempt to avoid the yellow jackets, write the boys, keep painting trim (I shake my fist to the sky against all-wood-very-dirty/dusty trim from the 80s!), meet with students, brush burrs from the barn cats, return my milk bottle to the general store, check on my friends, remember to eat well, try to both work and rest, and continue negotiating the profound fortune of two lived experiences.

How do I give and serve, but not deplete? How do I make peace with Sherwin Williams? How do I welcome and listen, but not suffer fools or respect lies? How do I listen to myself and also to others?

Birds and cicadas

Several weeks ago, a neighbor wrote to our listserv asking if anyone else had dead black birds in their yard or noticed them around the neighborhood. She had two dead birds, one of which seemed to drop out of the sky; it crashed onto her balcony.

Other neighbors responded during the following days. They, too, were coming across dead birds, all black and rather large- like grackles or blackbirds.

Concurrently, the patient cicadas of BroodX started to surface. I began to see trees wrapped like mummies in fine-mesh netting but didn’t think more of it. Oliver has been very excited about the brood’s emergence, and through his eyes I saw the magic of these little creatures. One evening, he sat statue-still in a tree for nearly 45 minutes, quietly filming a cicada molt. His science teacher has talked quite a bit about BroodX, and Ol knew more about them than I did, again opening my eyes to a deeper magic and awareness of the theatre of the natural world all around us.

Not everyone is so sanguine about the cicadas though. I don’t love when they land and walk on my body, but I’m certainly not going to hurt them. They are so gentle and appear to be both incredibly earnest and kinda dumb. When you pick them up, to remove them from your body or out of a dangerous spot on the sidewalk, say, they make the funniest sound. It sounds like distress or frustration, and I cluck comfortingly until I manage to put each one as high as possible. Oliver says their goal is to go way, way up in trees so they can more safely lay eggs. Anyway, I tend to anthropomorphize the crap out of animals, so who really knows what their little grunts mean, but I like them.

Several days ago, as I was leaving to get Ol from school, a blackbird flew into an exterior wall of our house and fell into the window bay below. I didn’t have time to stop, but as soon as we got home, I told Jack to get a box and a towel and Ol to get a small bowl of water, while I donned gloves and lowered myself into the window well. The poor bird had crusty eyes and looked frantic. I spoke softly and gently clutched him in my gloved hands, managed to get out of the well, and placed him in the box. Before we could close it, he took flight and weaved drunkenly across the street. We saw him fly into a tree and drop several feet, and I doubt he was long for the world.

Today in the Washington Post, this article discussed the recent spate of bird deaths and blindness -the premise is a mysterious neurological illness striking them [an earlier article suggested West Nile via mosquito, but recent tests have come back negative]. Some have hypothesized that they are falling ill, going blind, and dying because of all the pesticides people are putting out to kill the cicadas. No one knows yet, but it’s concerning and sad.

The number of dead and dying cicadas alone has been tough enough to bear; I’ve been surprised by how sorry I feel about how many don’t make it. It’s like their entire evolutionary plan is mass numbers and instinct, neither of which seems terribly hopeful. Why do we need to kill them all? They’re an ephemeral presence, and they sing all day. Yes, it’s loud at times, but consider it white noise.

Little cicada corpses are everywhere, and now birds are going blind and falling out of the sky, and honestly, after 16 months of mass dying and suffering from Covid, I’m both weary and discomfited. Parts of the world are in severe drought; others are flooding; some are melting; others are starving. The planet is telling us something. I hope more people start to listen.

Creativity

In my last post, I wrote about anxiety, a companion for as long as I can remember. I imagine it should seem obvious, but I have just (!) made the connection between my anxiety and my creative spirit: when I have insufficient time to imagine or create, my anxiety increases. At this ripe age of 45, the lesson is, apparently, “never stop paying attention to your being because you still might learn some things.”

Perhaps this is why women seem to flourish in our later thirties, forties, fifties, and on. We start to make connections to and simultaneously honor our needs, desires, ways of thriving, and all the impediments to those that life, society, and family have erected: the expectations, shoulds, and very real responsibilities that sap us dry if we let them. But as life goes on, more and more women start to say, “Fuck this. I am tired, and I have done my damn part.” It’s liberating, albeit vexing at times; to let go, to consider disappointing or angering, to care less because you’re caring more for self. It can feel downright illicit though I suspect most of us describe our reactions towards self as selfish. Isn’t that rich?! Self-honoring as selfish. I swear y’all, women have been sold the shittiest grab bag of plastic crap.

Yes, there is entirely too much self-absorbed, self-preferencing, no-generosity-of-spirit in the world. Sometimes the social contract seems more than threadbare. But as I sit on my porch, relishing a day of breeze and birds and bugs and quietude (yes: my children have been away since 11a), it seems self-ish may be worthy of reconsideration.

There isn’t much in the way of etymological history regarding selfish. One of the earliest mentions I found was, perhaps not surprisingly, by a 17th century Protestant. Jesus, the puritanical guilt over everything. [Possibly, at that time, men experienced similar “guilt” as women, were they not “Christian” enough, but still; I am sure women experienced more. ]

Anyway, per an etymological dictionary, in the 17th C, synonyms of selfish included: self-seeking (1620s), self-ended and self-ful.” Firstly, it should be clear why I put that in quotes, beyond not wishing to plagiarize: IT HAS NO OXFORD COMMA! I was once a doubter but am now a fully-converted believer. Use the Oxford. Do you want to eat grandpa?

And secondly, let’s take a close look at those synonyms.

1. Self-seeking: could not this mean searching for a greater understanding of self? Methinks it could, and more power to the person seeking!

2. Self-ended: this sounds antiquated, vaguely sexual, and self-absorbed. This is a definite contender for an accurate replacement of selfish.

3. Self-ful: if one is not ful of self, one is, as it stands mathematically, somewhat empty. So, we could imagine that ful of self is totally self-focused. But is that bad? Could it mean that one is self-aware enough to fashion a self in part derived from Self and in part derived from identities related to others? Caring for, working with/for, in relation with/to? Perhaps self-ful could be considered as a holistic understanding of Self which includes a variety of interests and connection. Indeed, the -ful is “a quasi-suffix attached to nouns denoting a containing thing…” But is the containing vessel exclusive, or is it porous? This seems consequential to me.

Regardless, the understanding of selfish since the 1600s seems largely unchanged. I’m not here tonight to redefine or re-connote a word. I’ve had two glasses of rosé and my kids will be home soon. My point is that ugly self-absorption is not the same is understanding and honoring one’s self and one’s needs. I am never worse off emotionally than when I ignore myself. And here we can circle back to creativity and me. #selfish or #selfaware?

The pandemic has, essentially, been an experiment in forcing most people to ignore the lives they’d fashioned for themselves in the Before so as to “successfully” survive the WTF Now. In my case, the then was a tiny bit of time for me surrounded by the boys, Tom, the pets, our house, volunteering, and activism. It was tenuous, y’all. And then, a barbed sphere of profound assholery emerged, and my tenuous balance was shot to Uranus.

ASSHOLE!

I held up really well for a very long time. I am, admittedly, a high-functioning human. I’ve honed this well over decades of being judged and misunderstood and sheepish for and about my emotional self. To err is too risky; to be perfect smooths all seams.

But the hurricane, winter, Susan Fucking Collins and politics, more than 14 months straight of no school for Jack, and this girl began to crumble.

My internist: “How about calling a therapist?”
Me: “Please, what would/could that do? Nothing can change right now.”

My husband: “Do you want to call RS?”
Me: “Please, what would/could that do? Nothing can change right now.”

Some friends: “Do you want to call a counselor? Look into an anti-depressant? I have, I have, I have.”
Me: “Please, what would/could that do? Nothing can change right now.”

But you know what? Shit can get harder. So I called RS, and immediately everything was improved. RS is amazing. She is 85 years old, maybe more. She is an absolute beast of a Woman. I love her. She has white hair, is always impeccably dressed, always has fresh flowers and flourishing African violets everywhere, and has the most profound appreciation of boundaries I have EVER WITNESSED. I’m telling y’all, she will cut you off if you’re in heaving sobs and time’s up. I have learned a great deal from her.

The essential message was: “How are you tending your creative self? And how are you setting boundaries that are healthy for you?”

Readers, as you may have surmised, I was not at all tending my creative self, beyond the sporadic-yet-obsessive cross stitch session. #SoManyCrossStitchedThings And boundaries? 😂🤣

In the crush of everything, my natural inclination was, is, to jettison Me to keep everything else afloat. But that is just not sustainable, and though I seem to have learned some profound lessons at 45, others remain elusive. They remain in the realm of learned-over-decades-is-selfish versus live-well-and-Self-ish.

Yesterday, Dad and I went to the dump and unburdened ourselves of much material weight. I had lunch with him and Mom and taught Mom to sell things on Facebook Marketplace before going to Michael’s for some canvasses and gesso. Then, I returned home, kissed everyone, and set up my long-dormant easel in the backyard. I opened the art bin Mom made me decades ago: “Nichols” written in Sharpie on every brush; my glass Mona Lisa jar-with-screen brush cleaner still completely usable, including bonus solid residue from the last time I painted; an ancient jar of pink soap; a giant tube of Titanium White; my old smock; a palette knife.

To be honest, I felt sheepish sitting there, my easel and a canvas propped atop a cheap TV tray on admittedly-thriving fescue. What could I create? Who was I to make art without a plan on a sunny Saturday afternoon? There were baskets of laundry to fold, a birthday present to wrap, dinner to consider, and so on.

But, oh, my creative self: at this point just feisty embers but definitely there; pissed, tired, and in need of oxygen. So I sat with my self-doubt and discomfort and considered how much I love Hunt Slonem’s bunny paintings and how wholly Tom does not care about Hunt Slonem, oil painting, or bunnies beyond a cassoulet, and so certainly does not want to spend what it costs to buy one. I sat with all that, and then I just opened the tub of gesso and tried to recall all my years of art lessons with Ms. Melton.

I considered the strawberry soda I liked to drink and the confidence I felt in her room and the longevity of lovingly-stored brushes and paints and Lyquin and sense-memory. Afterwards, I looked at my painting of bunnies, and honestly? I was pleased. “Good” or “bad” isn’t the point. The exercise and product are.

What does it mean when we believe in what we once knew and act on that? On what we once could do and made time for?

Why do we stop doing those things and that? And what is the cost?

For me, at least, the cost is great. It is increasingly one I’m not willing to barter. Even if it takes a low point and RS to remind me of the value of holding my line.

I have always thought that artistic genius and mental “illness” are meeting points on a circle versus end points on a line. This is not remotely to say that I consider myself any sort of artistic prodigy or mentally unwell. What it is is but a reconfiguration of the denotation and an acknowledgment of the porous membrane between wellness and not. What was once selfish may actually be the self-seeking of a self-ful self. In that is plenty of room for love and compassion and care of others WHILE keeping one’s own core vibrant and alive.

In living a truest self, the possibility of isolation always threatens. Some will find your boundaries, your expression, your very being unappetizing. So. So! So? “So what!” is painful but also freeing. At least I think so, now. In this moment of delighted clarity, I urge you to go plant, paint, sow/sew, read, think, water, love, give, share and also to do all of that for your Self.