Non, Je ne regrette rien

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.   

This quote from Mary Oliver pushes me to attempt to write a lyric essay about love. I fear that I am not up to the task, that it is too grand a topic, but I need to give it power and time. In Marlene's last two writing circles, I began. This is an amalgamation of my two writes. I begin, knowing that this may be rearranged, or deleted but I am excited - the ideas are starting to come:

Rob 

In your ratty old dressing gown, you walked into the kitchen and held out your arms. I walked into them. You drew me close and held me tight to your belly. I am surprised at how a simple hug made me feel so loved. 

I don't know how to define love. The love I shared with you was not saccharine sweet, not a fairytale romance. 

You died a tragic death. There is a beginning and end to our over-fifty-year love affair. 

This morning I stood looking out the kitchen window, coffee in hand, admiring the wisteria with its violet blossoms and thought of Leonard Cohen. When we were young, still students, we would read Cohen's poetry and make love. I remember one morning, I was to meet a friend but Leonard had us lusting so,  we couldn't pull apart - even when my friend was hammering at the door and I had to smother my laughter in your chest..  

My lady can sleep Upon a handkerchief Or if it be Fall Upon a fallen leaf.

I smile at this memory and, from somewhere out of the blue, I start humming "Bird on a Wire" and again, Cohen's words help me describe our love. 

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch

He said to me, "You must not ask for so much"

And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door

She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

You are the beggar though you never begged. You had more than you dreamed possible. I was the whore asking for more - not gold or silver. I wanted more dialogue and more intimate moments. And somewhere along the line, I stopped asking for more. Did I stop too soon? 

I learned to live as you lived, doing my own thing. You were so sure of yourself, so self-contained. Your love of music was, to my mind, your true love. (I shall add mention here of his sound work and awards.) Mine was writing. (Anais Nin story?) But I was never as sure of myself as you were. 

My heart breaks as I recall a scene from Charles de Gaulle. We had checked in for a flight to Toronto and you became violently ill. We went to the airport medical centre. You thought that I would leave you there and fly away without you. How could you think this? Did you not know that you were loved?

Okay, I have begun!

Tempus Fuit

There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto. And in that understanding, there is a profound loneliness, a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself.

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

I wake this morning pensive. Not an unknown state for me. I have not written here since January and so much has happened as I have travelled thousands of miles. I have spent time with my precious daughter and her family. A hundred glimpses of beauty. I have been to Paris working and have at least gleaned a dozen. I am home dealing with house issues in a language that slows me down and has me crying for help. Happiness descends when I accomplish some mundane task - of course, it is fleeting - but I feel proud of myself. And I continue to write with wild woman who remind me that I love to write and seldom allow myself the time." I need to work on this. 

I do allow myself time to wine and dine and also zoom with friends and family. And I love these times and know that they are important for my well-being. I think of Stella Brown, a fine artist - I pause here to pull "Stravinsky's Lunch" from my bookshelf - and her biographer Drusilla Modjeska writes "If her life teaches us anything, it is that more than one thing matters, and maybe in the end it is the conversations we have - both in love and in art - that will come trailing behind us through those pearly gates." 

I read the quote from Woolf again and wonder if she is right. Is life just "a series of insignificant moments"? Is happiness "a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto"? Do I feel "a profound loneliness"? At times, yes. I pause and think. But no, I do not feel a profound loneliness often. I feel lucky to have what I have. Below, a few glimpses of beauty.  

 

On the Tip of my Tongue

From somewhere/ a calm musical note arrives/ You balance it on your tongue,/ a single ripe grape

(I love these lines - read by Marlene. I must ask her the author.)

I am still sad without Rob. No music drifts down from the attic. The jasmine incense no longer burns. No ear to listen to me ramble. No driver when I go to town. I must choose my own fruits and vegetables. I cook without imagination. It lacks his thoughtfulness, his love of experimentation.

We would drive hours each summer to the jazz festival at Marciac. Jazz was Rob's true love. And yet he wanted me by his side. He would carefully choose performers who sang as he knew I loved lyrics. I felt this was a gift. He was sharing something that brought him joy. We would sit at small cafes and before the waiter could bring our drinks "a calm musical note arrives".  

Small bands of musicians roamed the town. They erupted everywhere.

For the most part, we lived peacefully together and apart. He worked. I worked. We were both constantly in motion. But at the end of most days, we'd sit and eat together. Sometimes, he would yell down the stairs that dinner is ready and sometimes, I'd begrudgingly leave my desk and sit across from him.

Now I worry that I wasn't kind enough. 

 When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Gift from the Sea

My sleep is disturbed. I sleep for two hours and wake, perhaps have a cup of camomile tea, light a cigarette, leaning out the kitchen window, looking over the messy tangled garden below. Sometimes I weep but never enough to water the garden. And then I fall asleep again...

This post is a little aimless but it pleases me. Here, I am free to say what I please. "Dare I disturb the universe?" 
I think something is gelling inside of me and it's on the tip of my tongue.

Curriculum Vitae

 I have been working on this forever, practicing Louise DeSalvo's "The Art of Slow Writing", and trying to mimic Lisa Mueller's poem "Curriculum Vitae". She is much cleverer than I am. At the last moment, I changed to present tense. 

I have decided to move on and do one for Rob. I might return to this some day. I really like some lines and am uncertain about others. 

Curriculum Vitae

1. On a green isle, razed by bombs, hungry for coal and potato, I am conceived for a house.

2. Cows low and milk in my grandfather's barn, as I slide out of my mother, underweight and ravenous.

3. I gain, nourished by her big fat Quaker family until my grandfather laughs at my father. He retaliates by crossing an ocean with his elder's first daughter and only grandchildren.

4. In the country of strangers, my mother weeps rivers.  My father sends his family back to the old country.

5. My mother runs free while her sisters coddle my sister and me.  Months later, her conscience pricks: women belong beside their husbands, she says. She wore out her welcome, my father says. 

6. Another sister is born.  We move house. Another sister, another house. The pattern repeats itself. 

7. When I sprout breasts I understand that lust, not houses, makes babies. I am appalled.

8. My body extends and grows graceful in a room with mirrors and barres. I share my first orgasm with a dancing teacher.

9. I fall upon books by clever women and leave family and small town for a university sprawl. 

10. I meet a quiet man whose arms and lips stir my blood. Although I have sworn never to marry, I break my oath. 

11. Long days writing advertising. Long nights in household drudgery. I trade my quiet man for a room of my own and a piano bar. 

12. A year passes before he slips into my bed and leaves his scent and a love letter. I succumb and we have one, two, three children.

13. While my quiet man is making a name for himself, no one calls me by name. 

14. Escape to sunflower fields and grape vines. While the children school, I school: in open-air markets and small cafes,  I read volumes and fill notebooks. A letter erupts into a literary fuck feast.

15. Home to old routines. In the back garden, my quiet man builds a writing house. 

16. Lessons in humility. Up and down, round and round on the carousel of time. Three small beings grown tall, independent and leave. 

17. I turn 60, then 70, and celebrate with cherry blossoms in Japan.

18. An evil virus roams the globe killing whoever wherever. We lock our door, sharing wine, conversation, and music across balconies.

19. In Morocco, the unimaginable happens. My quiet man falls down seven mosaic-tiled steps. After 53 years, death do us part.

20. The sound of silence. I dissolve and reshape, like cumulous clouds, not knowing what form to take in my final act.

Courage Kindled

The last days of the year were filled with fun and games, good food and wine, and sitting cosy, watching movies in our matching pjs (a gift from Brendan and Jane). We chose a lemon tree (no evergreens left) and decorated it with Christmas ornaments, got stuck in a muddy field in Mary's car - heavy with wine - and were pulled out by a tractor. 

We drove to Castres to dine at Cuq en Terrasses (a gourmet feast) and to Causades to visit a hat store for Jane. The last day we spent in Toulouse, eating at Entrecôte (a favourite) and then onto La Halle de la Machine with giant Minotaur and Dragon that moves, breathes fire and scared poor Seb. Ten days passed in a flash and my family left to celebrate New Year's Eve in London. I welcomed in the new year by myself.  

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

by John O’Donohue

"In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you."

I've been trying to write a blog for the new year but the wonderful ideas and sentences that form in my head never quite make it to the page. I am always afraid of appearing too simple, and of becoming so vulnerable that I curl into a ball and die. (I always had a flair for the melodramatic.) 

Still the fear I felt when I read my last proprioceptive writing exercise about my shattered heart was as real as the childhood fear of monsters under my bed.

I would like to "find ease in risk". I think my biggest problem is that I haven't been writing and am out of practice. Easily remedied. I have begun. Since January 1st, I've set myself the task of writing for 15 minutes, after my morning coffee. And yes, the writing is pretty simple and I do write the obvious but my friend Susan once told me that this is my gift. 

On January 1st, I wrote "I wish to grow old disgracefully like Billy Connolly. I wish to be kinder to myself but not bullshit myself. I want to feel freer about asking for help. I want to face my fears (here I go again) and do it anyway. I want to stop being so self-effacing. I want to love myself. This reminds me of Brendan's question of many years ago. "Would the people who love you love you if you were stupid, worthless? And underneath this thought is the thought that I smoke to remain a bad girl, a rebel who doesn't want to spend every minute trying to be perfect." 

And so the new year begins...

I am trying to establish new habits. I am learning to ask for help. Before Rob died, I simply yelled up the stairs. Now, I must ask an outsider. So be it. 

I do not want to live a small life. I must give up - for now - trying to find the perfect word, sentence, transition and just write. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

 

Opening my mouth

 I feel my life has grown small since Rob's death. I have not published many words as I don't want to share my grief, my anger, my confusion. 

Marlene, dear friend, mentor invited me into her wild women writing circle. I wanted to join and yet I was frightened. Sometimes what comes out of my pen onto the page is too raw, too childlike, and I'm embarrassed. And I feel ridiculous that I am embarrassed. I have regressed and donned my solid coat of armour. 

The writing circle - women from around the world - excites me, inspires me, calms me. I am beginning to feel that I belong. Several weeks ago, the topic was poetry. I am not a poet. I chose the easiest form, the Elfchen or Elevensie. First line has one word, second has two, third thas three, fourth has four, and fifth has one. 

Mouth

Grows rusty

Fear robs voice

Leading a small life

Sob

Mouth

Rust forming

Frog croaking angrily

Is escape even possible

Hell

Mouth 

Sweet lips

Refusing to open

Fear has frozen words

Help

Frog

In throat

Refuses to leave

Mouth slowly forced open

Escape

Rust

Corrodes jaw

Jaw needs oil

Oil squirted between lips

Freedom

Mouth 

Grows rusty

Silent too long

Life becomes more difficult

Speak

I am not impressed by the above but when we split into pairs and I read, the other woman laughed and said you have to read these. "They're funny."  (I wasn't trying for humour but I was the first to read - otherwise I might have chickened out.  

Towards the end of the session, one sweet woman said that this is what she's here for - to hear other women's voices.