Windows to the Soul

His name was Rowan*. He was about three or four years old, and I'll probably not forget his face. He won't forget mine, but for different reasons. He cannot forget it, because he never saw it. Rowan is stone cold blind.

He came into the store where I work today, accompanied by two other small children and three adult minders. A cheerful, towheaded imp of a lad, wielding a specialized cane with a roller ball on the tip. He was smiling from the first moment I saw his face.

To see that face was to know that his eyes simply did not work. I chatted a bit with his guardian and she said he had been completely sightless since birth. The other children, two adorable little girls, were also legally blind but did have some limited sight. The group was visiting from a local school for the blind, and today was "O" day. They were out visiting stores like ours to get tactile and sensory impressions of things that started with "O". Like olive oil from the shop down the street. Oregano and orange peel from ours. Lunch was to be at Olive Garden, a prospect at which the kids, especially Rowan, were eagerly anticipating.

I watched the kids as they were led around the store. It was humbling and enlightening to see how someone so young and without benefit of the sight that most of us give no second thought. Every pattern change, every color shift, every textural difference was an opportunity for discovery, even delight. My mind reeled at the idea of treating color and fabric as things to be sussed out, requiring more than the average effort to effect understanding of the concepts of "blue" and "carpet".

Oddly enough, I began to feel quite at ease in their presence. While they had some difficulties expressing themselves, it was a joy to watch their faces when they would take a sniff of the sample jars scattered throughout the store. A radiant happiness, pure appreciation, and something I told myself I need to watch and learn from.

It was the cinnamon that really sent my heart over the edge. All three of the kids took a big sniff of the strongest cinnamon in the store. Their faces scrunched up, mouths in a gleeful rictus of "Oh, my!" and the smiles. Oh, my god, the smiles.

Rowan looked up in the direction of his guardian's voice. I looked into his eyes, he could not see mine, and unfocused beauty lanced my heart. He grinned widely and in a loud voice announced "Cinna-MON!". Then he laughed and something divine swept throughout the store. I felt faint.

As they were ready to leave, I made a gift to them of little jars of cinnamon, some specials we had on hand. The adults were effusively grateful, thanking me repeatedly. One of them said to the little boy "What do you say for the cinnamon, Rowan? Can you say thank you?"

Rowan turned his head in my direction, looking over my shoulder but straight into my heart. His eyes were like porcelain, beautiful and glazed. I gulped.

"Thank you you for the cinna-MON!" He turned to leave, hand in hand with his guardian. "You're welcome, Rowan!" I said.

But really I should have been thanking him for teaching me more about sight in ten minutes than I think I've learned in a lifetime. I should thank him for helping me see.

---

*Not his real name, changed for privacy reasons.

Bowing My Head, Saying Hey-Men!

Sunday, March 11, 8:50 PM. Spring night, cool breeze, calm heart.

Unplugged a little bit this evening. Paid attention to what I was eating tonight, instead of the computer screen. It makes a big difference in the quality of the meal, I can tell you. There is something to this practice of mindfulness I have been ruminating on as of late.

Mindfulness.  I paid attention to the grains of rice in my bowl, the flecks of parsley in the gumbo, the savor of shrimp on my tongue and between my teeth.  Time slowed down. The house breathed around me.

As the spoon gathered up the last goodness in the bowl, uncovering the bottom of white porcelain flecked with green bits of herbs, I had a quiet revelation. In the here and now, I am humbly grateful for two things (not the only things, to be sure) in my life: good gumbo and deep love.

In the midst of the storms of my life, gumbo nourishes my body, and love...my friends, Love it is that nourishes my soul.  Between the two of them, especially love, I believe I am going to be well fed in this life.

It's good, that's all there is to it.

Shelter for the Traveler

The tick of the clock overlays the bacon-frying-sizzle of wheels over wet pavement. Train horn sounding in the distance as I sit alone in the living room of my parent's house, gazing at the Saint Christopher medal hanging on a chain around my neck.  I am not Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, nor am I devout of any persuasion, so the medal seems incongruous. It is a gift from someone very close to my heart, and thereby has become something sacred in its own quiet way.  I treasure it for that, knowing this gift was given out of love.

It is late evening.  I have returned from a day at the hospital where I was helping tend to my ailing mother. My father is staying at the hospital with her overnight. She should be home tomorrow, if things continue their positive course. It is my wish, my hope, that she also receive blessings on her journey.

I have to pause a moment, listening to the clock and the train.  My right hand steals to the medal.  I run my fingers over it, the golden metal of it feeling warm and slightly slick. Closing my eyes, I hear rain falling on the roof to add its own counterpoint to the rest.

My head rests on my left hand, the medal clasped in my right. It warms to blood temperature, almost as a living thing.  I breathe, I rest, and my heart grows light and warm to know that someone watches over me on this road I am traveling.

Glistening Edges

So you may have guessed by now, I haven't felt much like writing lately.  A few random bursts here in October, plus some handwritten stuff in my little black notebooks (for me, not thee, at this time) and in a new journal I'm keeping.  The streak is over, too, last entry for my More Than A Year Of Daily Writing went up on October 8th.  Officially I topped out at 375 straight days of posting.  Not sure how I managed that.

But mostly, I haven't felt the ambition to write.  Most of the ideas I've had I decide really weren't that blog-worthy, and for the remainder I haven had little energy to pursue them.  I have been too tired to return replies, as my poor record with responses to everyone will indicate.  It's because of the "cold black space with the glistening edges"* that has broken open my personal space-time continuum: getting laid off, the subsequent job search and the attendant money crisis created thereby.

This particular black space has not taken complete control of my life, but its presence is sucking up a lot of energy and attention.  It makes me tired.  I have to crank up the personal PR machine, again, start "rebranding" myself again, and it inflicts upon me great vexation.

I know I am capable, and smart, and good at what I do.  I'm also tired of having to explain that over and over.  It's draining and does no good for my morale.  Fighting for balance and security so frequently, well, that is no way to live a life.  I am not really a magician, and my hat may be out of rabbits.

The upside is I have people who love me, who care about me and are helping me in ways practical and spiritual.  I truly would not be able to sustain myself without their help.  I am grateful for the support, emotionally and otherwise. There are other things I am grateful for, too, including the many readers I have here on Irish Gumbo, and I may write a little more about that stuff later.

For now, I'm going to get some rest, and say thanks to all those who believe in me.  Thank you.

---

*Bonus points and a Gumbo high five if you can tell me the song from which that lyric was taken, and the band.

Pollination

Wind holding its breath
white cowl trembling so gently ---
hibiscus cups bee

Sunday Meditation #2: On The Problem Of Weeds

I look out my kitchen window at the riotous growth of the crepe myrtle in the corner of the yard, the almost tree-like bush resembling a prideful lion's head with its spray of mane-like branches.  The branches festooned with magenta blossoms.  The wild roses, like lion cubs, crouch at its feet, peeking their little leaves out from the protection of the myrtle.  It makes me smile and remember G-maw, my maternal grandmother.  She had a crepe myrtle in her yard, a large one, and I always remember that one as a tree.

The weeds, too, that desecrate the planting beds ringing my house, they remind me also of G-maw.  Not for any direct resemblance, no, but only the absence of weeds in my grandmother's presence.  She was a gardener, with a plot behind her house in which she grew flowers and tomatoes and other beautiful, tasty things to eat.  She had little patience for weeds, mostly.  She often tended the large, impromptu garden that sprang up behind my boyhood home, on a patch of land bordered by the neighbor's houses.  Many good things came from that plot, and G-maw helped them grow.  She was formed in a time where it was necessary for you to grow the things you ate, because if you didn't you might not eat.

The garden of my youth, the flower plot of my grandmother's home, has begun to fade somewhat under the pressure of time.  Fade is perhaps not the exact word, as I sit here and contemplate the setting sun. Blurred or softened is perhaps a better choice.  A view through thick panes of glass abraded by sand on the winds of time, the memories achieve a certain glow on the screen of my mind.

I remember the weeds, also, as I look out the window.  The weeds have grown fast and thick this summer, fattening their stems and fleshly leaves while I wasn't looking, or was distracted by the noise and clatter of the modern world.  I see the weeds, and I feel unsettled, because I know I have let some things get away from me.  Weeds are something my G-maw would have taken care of, right away, as she often did when she was still of this mortal coil.

Me, I dither too much, crow mind distracted by the shiny things.

I stand at the window and sip my glass of tea.  Silently, I send up a prayer, a request, or maybe just an ethereal "hello" to my G-maw, asking her to come visit, offer some advice.

There are weeds around me, G-maw, and I want to know what to do.  You knew what to do, always.

Sunday Meditation #1: Mystery And The Man

I am not a religious man, although sometimes I wish I could say that was true.  This tug, this pull that I feel in my heart some days, where I marvel at the beauty of the world and wonder if it really is the grace of God speaking mutely to my soul.  Such wonder!  Such mystery!  And I do not say that lightly.  The skeptic in me that so often rears his suspicious face fights hard with the naive innocent that still exists somewhere in my heart.  But I try.  I try so hard to cast off the jaundice induced by a world that so often seems bent it putting everyone through the fire or on the anvil, to hammer out of us the juices of life.  Were that this not so!  It appears to be, however, and the task for the jaded such as myself, and perhaps the innocents who still believe, is to maintain that sense of wonder that makes the world so fresh and new.

I cannot pretend to be a child any longer.  The number of summers that have passed since I could lay claim to the moniker far outnumbers the summers I actually spent as a child.  The weary adult in me is wistful, perhaps, for that refreshing lack of affection. Or perhaps for the bright, sharp edges of my soul that used to be, now ground down by the grit blown in the winds of time.  It is enough to make one want to run and hide, should one feel overrun by the vagaries of this kaleidoscope trip we call life.

Enough.  Enough of the slightly sour melancholy of the "grown-up".  I have wisdom now, but that does not mean I can no longer enjoy the sound of crickets or the syrupy lassitude of a cat sleeping in a warm spot on the neighbor's porch.  These things had their origins in something mysterious, whether God or the accidents of physics.  Some day I may kneel before an altar and declare myself open to a Creator.  Until then, it is enough to sit in a chair on the porch, breathe the perfumed air of the evening and know that I am whole in the world.

Dog Days of the Soul

I once was possessed of the notion that I was a tough guy.  Not in the sense of looking to get into fights, or crush beer cans on my forehead or any such nonsense.  I thought I was tough that I could take anything the universe could throw at me.  It was a conceit that sustained me for quite a long time in my life.  The shame of it is that it was simply not true.  The universe, as only it can, disabused me of that notion in a manner most violent, then kicked me while I was struggling to stand up.

My Big Bro has been gone two years now.  I thought of him today, and realized what it was that had been nagging me a little since mid-July.

Remembering him reminded me that, really, I'm not as tough as I like to think.

Remembering him reminds me that I am human, as was he.  Beautiful, sad, flawed but ultimately worthy of love.  

This is a gift worth far more than being a tough guy.  I remember you, my brother, and rejoice in being human.

Adventures in Sub-Saharan Virginia: A Wedding Story

Ah, summer.  Long days. Hit nights. Vacations. Travel. Hit nights. And hot days.  Chillaxin'.  And hot days and nights.  We all love summer, right?  What better time than to load up the car, throw the chillun in the back, and road trip out of state for family visit and a wedding!  Woot!  That is precisely what I did this past weekend.

Well, I'll tell you what would be a better time:  a road trip that doesn't start in the afternoon of one of the hottest, if not THE hottest day so far this year around these parts.  A road trip on said hot day during which the car air conditioner stops working about a half-hour into a 4-1/2 hour road trip (excluding dinner break and hopefully not getting any speeding tickets).  A road trip on which I have a nearly 7-year old daughter in the back with nothing but a Leapster to keep her occupied.

It. was. hot.  Like, hell hot.  "Hotter than the Devil's hatband" as my dad often says.  Temperatures were in the triple digits and humidity was near or at 100%.  Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked donkeys.

I had left straight from work and in an effort to save time skipped going back home to change into shorts.  I ended up driving down the highway with my pants legs pulled all the way up to my knees, and leaning forward in my seat so I wouldn't sweat out my kidneys.  The Wee Lass usually complains about wind in her face but this time she had her window down all the way, face into the breeze blasting through the opening.  From time to time I would glance in the rear view mirror and see Her Royal Cuteness lolling around like a boneless Weeble, slumped in her booster seat with tongue hanging out.  Fortunately, I did have some water on hand, and we topped of big cups of iced tea at our dinner stop.

The drive through Virginia was, to my relief, not as bad as it could have been.  Traffic cooperated, and to her credit the Wee Lass complained almost nil.  We sang songs and looked for traffic signs.  Amazingly, we arrived at the ancestral Gumbo homestead with sanity intact, if a little soggy and wrung out.

The next day was wedding day, for my nephew (Son of Big Bro) and his fiancee.  They had planned an outdoor wedding, on the water, and the show was going to go on.  Poor things, there was no way for them to know that on their wedding day, the temperature was going to be over 100 degrees.

Did mention it was hot?  Like hell hot?

But in the end, it really wasn't that bad.  The wedding party held up well, no one fainted or threw up and the ceremony was beautiful.  My nephew is quite a handsome lad in a tux (and taller than I am!), and the bride...well...the bride was in a word, gorgeous.  Watching the two of them exchange vows, and the emotions that crossed their faces, reminded me of just how precious love is, and what we as human beings can mean to one another.  For a few minutes, the heat and the discomfort and the fatigue of travel disappeared, and we all basked in the radiance of love.

It was wonderful.  I know my Big Bro was watching from somewhere, with pride, at the joy that is his son and my nephew.  He was there, too, I think, because we carry him in our hearts.  

Later, as the newlyweds were leaving, we blew bubbles and wished them well.  Their road trip is just beginning, and it is my dearest wish that it be a long and fruitful one.

Sometimes a little adventure is what we need, to appreciate the quiet beauty of life all around us.

Stars, Nodding Their Heads

In the gloaming, by the dogwood
they nod their heads, a zephyr's caress
like hands of a lover on beloveds cheek

Quiet paramours to the dusk,
fireflies' courtesans, or street mimes
There by the fence, bouquet on the breeze

In the garden, a pause of breath
for the night and for the lovers,
entwined hands and stolen kisses

On heaven and earth, they blossom,
throwing their souls to the wind
and their hearts into the dusk

In the gloaming, sun fades to mood indigo,
their bodies limned in pale silver,
Knowing life, petals savor the sweetness

Learning Logos

I have been blessed to receive, through the graces of a good friend, a copy of A Year with Thomas Merton, a profound and elegant collection of daily meditations by the Thomas Merton, the famed Trappist monk who was also an author, poet and civil rights activist.  This man of contemplation died in 1968, but somehow he read my heart.

There is much to be said about what I have read so far, but I today I wanted to say that I have learned a new word, gleaned from the July 9th meditation entitled "Heat and Zen Quiet".  The word is kerygma, defined as "the proclamation of religious truths" or "the apostolic proclamation of salvation through Jesus Christ".  Thomas Merton used it to describe the heat of the day he was experiencing:

"It calls for one of those nature poems, a kerygma of heat such as the Celts never had."

Brother Merton showed me the word.  This use of kerygma was masterful.  It is the use of a word in a nontraditional way, by someone who truly understood the original meaning.

In spite of the vestiges of my Christian upbringing,  upon reading that sentence and checking the definition, I felt the pangs of jealousy and inadequacy.  This is not unusual, sometimes, when taught a lesson you didn't know you were about to learn

Sunday morning, and I am basking in the afterglow of enlightenment.  The burn will fade, leaving me with the warmth of knowledge, all thanks to a Trappist who knew me before I knew myself.

Work The Land

Soil so fertile
Banks of Nile threading the heart
Plant love, watch it grow

Geode

From clattering day to library room, I walked through the door and into shelter, for the first time, it felt like.  The house was quiet, so quiet, the traffic non-existent, the birds muttering or chirping not at all.  The kids playing across the way were oddly silent, little mimes playing tag in the yard.  I nearly stumbled.

The briefcase still slung across my shoulder felt ponderous, the lunch bag dangled from my hand, almost forgotten in my sudden halt in the living room.  There was so little noise I wondered if perhaps my hearing had suddenly gone.  Small tik-tik-tiks in the floor and the susurrus of air in the ducts belied the sensation of lost hearing.  This house was no anechoic chamber, but the feeling was hard to shake.

I became quiet, somewhat timid and reluctant to move.  That kind of silence seems almost sacred.  It is so rare, so unexpected, yet engenders the feeling of being in a cathedral between services.  I did not want to disturb it.  There was a presence, here in the living room.  Not a presence of voyeurs unseen; more like a spirit trying to remind me of something.

I set my briefcase down slowly, holding my breath.  I stood still and listened without straining.  It was then, after a few heartbeats, that I had my revelation.

In the silence, sometimes, if you are fortunate, and care to listen, can be found the sound of yourself.  The whisper of blood tickling the ears and gently pulsing under the skin, the sound of your breath, the slow fireworks of the neurons firing in your brain; all of these tender reminders of what it means to be human.  Of what it means to unplug from the Machine and tap into the quantam currents of the universe.

Pop culture has made the idea of a "Force" somewhat of a running joke, and I suppose it will be that way for a long time.  Nonetheless, I like to entertain the notion that something like it exists, that we can channel sometimes and find ourselves connected, rooted and aware of the music of ourselves.

I heard that music, briefly, in a cool living room bathed in the light of northern windows.  I heard that music, and gave thanks for the taste.

On Seeing Things

Lucky, how lucky I feel sometimes.  Glad to be alive.

Not in the sense I survived a life-threatening event, like crashing a tractor-trailer into a guardrail on a bridge and hanging over the side until rescue came along.  Glad to be alive in that the body and the mind, fatigue combined with stress notwithstanding, feel good about being alive.  This sensation is not unknown to me but I can say it is not like a best friend who comes over to my house everyday.

Yet, it is here.  Has been for some matter of days, now.  How to explain that?

In part, it is a result of my vision returning.  My inner vision, mind you, not my actual eyesight.  (For that matter, there can be a difference between 'vision' and 'eyesight'. But I digress)  This inner vision I fancied to be a set of mental lenses and filters that allow me to shift focus, zoom in and out, try different colors on the fabric of the world, all without leaving the confines of my admittedly big head.  These filters allowed me to see things.  Good things, wonder and beauty.  One day, a few months back, I woke up and I could not see those things.  Or if I could, then not very well.

I would have panicked, if I hadn't been emotionally wrung out and physically exhausted.  So I didn't.  Instead, I simply sat down and reckoned that I wouldn't see those things again.  The creative process began to ebb, and finding those things of beauty increasingly became harder and harder, to the point where I thought I might give up. What vision that was left to me was gradually losing its light.

Yet I didn't give up.  That I kept going, even if the going was glacial, is truly a wonder.

Things have begun to turn themselves to the sun.  I feel the warmth on my face, and color has returned to the landscape. I am seeing rivers as rivers and mountains as mountains, for the first time in months.

To see things for what they are, is to know beauty.

Early Summer Poetry Slam #3: Quiet Aria

She sings, moon listens
straining on tiptoe to hear
music of the heart

This Tree

We are on the road again, my daughter and I, heading back to my house after an all too short stay at the ancestral homestead.  A hazy Sunday afternoon somewhere in the Middle Peninsula region, with the Rappahannock River whispering to us from beyond the trees and fields to the east.  The trees are in full leaf now.  It is a very different scene from that of the winter, of the Februaries I wish to leave behind.

It was an occasion to celebrate life and a growing of the good green things in our souls, rather than assemble in the woods to mourn the falling of yet another mighty oak.  It was the first time in many years that I had the blessing of being among extended family for the sole purpose of being in one another's company because we could.  I saw some cousins I had not seen in too long, and met the next generation of the family.  Wee Lass was able to meet some kin she had not seen before, and I...well, I had the honor of basking in her glow, while she played in the pool with the other young ones.

I had forgotten how good that felt.  Back in the day, we used to have these gatherings all the time.  As you may have guessed, I didn't fully get how cool that was when I was right in the middle of it as a boy.

But I know now, yes, I do.  I knew it with each hug given, each kiss on the cheek and every laugh shared.  I felt in in my core as I watched the kids playing in the pool.  I live too much in my own head most of the time, which is really no true home; there in that backyard and for a few precious hours, I was home.

I had the singular gift of holding a four-month old baby, the beautiful daughter of of her equally beautiful mother (a second cousin of mine), and when that baby snuggled her face into my shoulder I felt a circuit trip somewhere in the earth.  The current I could feel flowing through my veins and into my heart.  It was still humming along when we had to leave the next day on our road trip home.

The corn and soybeans are beginning to sprout in the fields.  The crows and the hawks watch over everything, and the trees stand green and proud and harboring deer and rabbits among the undergrowth.  I could see those stands of trees across the green-gold of the planted acres, and it was then I felt another circuit close in the blood of my blood, the laughter in my ears, and the arms across my shoulders.

In the white gold sunshine of the eastern Virginia countryside, I had a revelation. I know how the tree feels to sink its roots deep into the soil from which it sprung.  I know how the tree feels when it becomes aware of the forest, and knows that it is home.

---

It is Memorial Day, and a time conducive to meditation amongst the cookouts and the sales, and the hoopla of modern American life.  I had plenty of time to think while driving home on Sunday, about what we are supposed to remember, and what we seem to actually do.  I've never been one prone to overt displays of patriotism, but neither have I totally lost sight of what this day is about.  Regardless of where we stand on the subject of the wars and aggressions America has initiated or been drawn into, it is certainly true that quite a few have given so much, including their lives, in the service of an ideal that does represent the best of our desires and intentions.  That service, in part, has made it possible for me to live the life that I do, and for me to enjoy being with my family.  For that, I am truly grateful. 

Wild Roses and the Savage Beast

Thursday evening I arrived back at Casa Del Gumbo wrung out like a old dishrag.  I was beat.  I was hungry.  I was ornery.  In short, I was fit company for neither man nor beast.  During my commute I was at a mild simmer, replaying some vexations from the day in the theater of my cranium.  Stress and fatigue had ganged up on me.  

When I stepped through the door I already had a few ideas for what I would post.  All of them were heavy on the angst and Sturm und Drang of the typical metropolitan life as manifested in a nebbishy 40-something with too much time to think and not enough time to do.  I was hoisting a big ol' steaming mug of cynicism topped off with the sprinkles of unfocused dissatisfaction.  I was loaded for bear.

Good thing I looked outside my kitchen window.  The side yard slopes down to a wooden gate to the backyard, and tucked into the corner of the fences is a wild rose bush.  I pruned it earlier this year before it could put on too much new growth, and that must have inspired the bush to make the most of this spring.

It is blossoming, in a manner most enjoyable.  I could see the bush frosted with pink roses.  I immediately went back outside and down to the rosebush.  The fragrance was faint but enticing.  I leaned into a particularly showy flower and drew deep of breath.  Oh, the aroma...the stress, the anxiety, the jaded fog in my head disappeared.  It was...well, see for yourself, courtesy of my phone camera:

Happy Sunday, y'all.

I Like To Sing-a, About The Spring-a...

For the first time in too long I managed a solo photo outing today, in the morning.  The weather here was uncommonly beautiful.  The sun shining and breeze blowing guaranteed I would be out of the house for a while.  So I flipped a mental coin: cut grass vs. walk through the park by the river.

The river won.

The coin must have known what I needed.  I arrived at the park relatively early, so there were fewer people than usual for such a good weather day.  Aside from a few gaggles of bikers and some rather attractive female runners (another Ponytail Files report, perhaps) I had the trail mostly to myself.  It was wonderful.

I found myself taking fewer pictures than I normally do.  The light, the sounds of birds and water were so entrancing there was little pressure to get that perfect shot.  I let it go and existed in the moment. To my mind, that is a fine definition of a great day, no matter how one views it.  Spring, tonic for the soul.

---

Something else that is tonic for the soul: moms. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. Making the world go 'round since forever...

Midnight

Midnight, silver rain
caresses silken petals,
dreaming of her hands

The Quiet

The life, it is not so bad
sitting here in the quiet
of the night breeze

Windows open to faint traffic
Cars slow rush down the street
lulling the body to sleep

Not so bad in the quiet
here on the couch, content,
far away from guns and blood