by Allison Moore | Jan 2, 2019 | Day by Day |
A few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend who is coming up on the first anniversary of her dear mother’s passing. She asked me how long it took after Vernon’s death to get my energy and focus back after heavy grief. I couldn’t answer clearly as I’m not sure how focused I’ve ever been, but I listed off the obvious helps I could recall: regular exercise, writing, artwork, temporary support groups, therapy, connective time with friends. But even as we talked, it dawned on me that those things were just fillers. Sure they helped, but none of us can know how long a healing will take. If we could, we would all take the best-proven pill. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what we do. Perhaps all that matters is that we get through the time without pushing ourselves backwards (but there is even grace for that…some self-destructive behavior can be part of the process as well, although coming back from that may require even more time and effort.) But somehow, we do get through the time—that’s just basic waking and sleeping and eating and breathing. Just because it feels like forever, doesn’t mean that’s true.
My grieving friend and I spoke about how deep healing happens under the surface…and perhaps it is just a matter of believing that it’s occurring at all. We can’t see it, we certainly can’t feel it, but what if God is always nudging us toward our health? What if the keys to wholehearted living are hidden within us, but they just take time to emerge. Regrowth is the natural order of things. It’s in our DNA as carbon creatures. It’s true that our physical bodies act completely opposite as we hurdle through our time here (thus, the painful gaps left by our losses and disappointments), but our minds/ hearts/spirits, the hidden parts of ourselves that actually run the show: this is where regeneration happens. I don’t know much about gardening, but I imagine some seeds take longer to germinate than others. I know that some years, a tree might not bear much fruit, and then suddenly it does!
I remember when Vernon was in the early days of his coma, with all sorts of beeping digital monitors plugged into his skull. He looked like a science experiment—perhaps he was! They were keeping his brain activity as low-level as possible so that it couldn’t consciously think, just aware enough to keep the rest of the body and its vital organs ticking. I noticed in this stage how quickly his wounds healed, how the deep cuts through his skin became light movie-star scars (a la Harrison Ford.) I mused with the doctors: if people were able to shut our brains off and rest as deeply for a month, would our modern stresses, our physical pains, illnesses, cancers diminish? We couldn’t know but in the conversation, we agreed it was likely. Because how seldom are we allowed deep rest? Even light rest doesn’t come cheap these days. Rest takes effort. What an oxymoron. Healing takes effort. It’s HARD to slow down and trust the process. Our whole society (and our shaky idea of self-worth) is designed to resist it.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Just looking around, we can see that it is nature’s natural state to heal and grow stronger. Just look at your miraculous skin and all the bruises and cuts it has endured in your lifetime. Look at broken hearts that love again and bring everyone around them renewed smiles and hope. Look at cut rose bushes that continue to flourish, smelling more lovely every season. Look at lizards with their tails. Look at the daily over-comers we know personally: those who recreate their lives after tragedy we can’t imagine. Look at refugees who are forced to begin their dreams over….and survive. Look at little dogs who run on three legs (or even two…with wheels!) Look at the green shoot of grass that grows-against-odds through the pavement, the flower of peace in war.
It’s probably easier to marvel at all this mending-momentum around us, than it is to see it in ourselves. I suppose we are just too close to our own version of our story. We are too close to our own private wounds. But we are all made from the same stuff! If we could only believe in ourselves the way we believe in each other….the way we believe in the smallest plants of our gardens (and those adorable dogs on wheels.)
Some time ago, I made this painting and called it The Seed Dreams of Flight. I was thinking about how long it seems to take to emerge from a dark place, a beginning place. But what if the long work is done under the surface, and suddenly, when the plant is ready for sunlight, it were to grow quickly, like an unstoppable vine? I imagined a budding seed, that perhaps is ingested by a bird, who then takes wing, as it would. The seed is redeposited back into the earth, having to start over yet again in the lonely dark soil—but even in its re-incubation, it remembers the echo of something higher, something brighter, so it holds on and lets the work happen. (Perhaps we even do this as babies, I really don’t know.) The seed remembers the air, it remembers sunlight, it remembers flying, it has a dream of the past and the future at once tucked into its core. It’s wired to grow, a dream of flight is in it’s ancient/new heart, even as it lays buried in earth and more earth. It won’t always be this way, but for now…it seems like forever. This may be stretching, but i think: This is science. This is faith. This is healing. This is nature. This is us. All of us.
Here is a poem by the poet Wendell Berry (a farmer himself, so he would know):
The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, and begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect—but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all—heaven’s clear
eye, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.
Seed will sprout in the scar. Sigh. Imagine that. For the new year, I wish you this: not only the healing of your wounds, but the belief that they are healing whether you feel it or not. And maybe: the willingness to put the time and the rest in to accelerate that growth. May it be a wonderfully surprising 2019 for us all!
by Allison Moore | Dec 16, 2018 | Day by Day |
“What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?”
I love poetry. Not every poem I read, and certainly not every one I’ve written, but since I was a teenager, I’ve loved the imagery, the rhythms, the depth, the stillness, the variety. I love listening to the stripped-down similarity of so many souls that have come before, all trying to express the most unchangeable things, to capture the most fleeting. I fill up notebooks of random thoughts…few become real poems, but when they do, there is such satisfaction. When I go to a bookstore or a library, I always end up in the poetry section. Just leafing through the pages makes me feel more centered. The older I become, the more I am drawn to poetry as a purer kind of language that gets more quickly to the heart of things. Only yesterday, when I listened to a wonderful podcast in which the poet Naomi Shihab Nye was interviewed, did I begin to find better words to explain why. She says that in a way, we live within a poem: “When you think, when you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another, that’s a poem. That’s what a poem does.” That was so helpful for me, with my over-wordy tendencies and runaway train of a brain that really only wants to make its connections for a truth it can hold.
I start with that because my mind has been having a difficult time making certain connections as of late. Bear with me while I try. Perhaps if I could turn these musings into an elegant poem, I could be forgiven for my reach. As those who have read this blog over the years will know, I am interested in the significance of anniversaries, the patterns of time. This is the closest to caring about numbers that I come, so I make the most of it. For a long time, I was counting the Fridays when we turned left past the fatal stop-sign at the end of our street. I was relieved that Vernon almost made it to our ten-year wedding anniversary so that I could celebrate our marriage with a party instead of just marking a death with a memorial service. I’m aware that my ten-year anniversary with Maki living under my roof is coming up in a few months too. I recognized on my birthday this year that I was the same age Vernon was when he was hit. I don’t know if numbers have any real significance, but there is poetry in the patterns, something to stop and hold a moment for, if I’m paying attention.
Somehow I got the idea in the past weeks to do the math, to figure out the time that has passed since Vernon died…and how it matched how long he had been in his injured state. Sure enough, the two seasons were almost exactly the same: 27 months. Of course the first season seemed much longer than a mere 27 months (I have the lines on my face to prove it) but if the past 27 months were the equally long second half of the book, we’d be at the end.What strange meter our lives are broken up in. We all know that life doesn’t make simple sense of numbers and there is no such thing as equal halves, but if this were a poem, can you see how evenly those seasons have been split into stanzas? On realizing this, I didn’t know what to do but cry…many times over many days. I cried in a way I hadn’t since he was hit, which startled me at first. These were a different kind of tears, opening up space in my heart that I didn’t know existed. Perhaps it hadn’t yet. Does saltwater taste different if it comes from a deeper place in the sea? I tried to stay present, naming things I’d never named, and at last, there was a sense of moving through another threshold into a hazy new season where I’m no longer defined by what has happened so far. If I try to imagine the grand timeline of my life, I can see these two matching verses were not long at all. There is a lot of space—and a lot of stories—on either side. My poem is not limited to 54 months, and I don’t want to be limited to all the things I decided were true during that time (even if I needed them to be true during that time.)
In another 27 months, I’ll be 49, the same age he was when he finally passed away. I’m sure I’ll try to process that pattern of numbers too. I imagine I’ll cry (I hope so) but maybe not so hard. Perhaps by then, I’ll need to find less meaning in everything, to string together less bizarre and wild connections. But who knows? The future doesn’t exist. What I do have is now…which is filled with great possibility. And I still have poetry: a gift to help me make a loose sense of things, whatever comes and goes, to break things up in bite-sized verses, to make connections along the long way.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
by Allison Moore | Nov 12, 2018 | Day by Day |
“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.”—Anne Lamott
I recently wrote about giving myself permission to decorate my walls on my own time. It was a relaxing thought, this idea that my mindset mirrored my new house and it was ok to just be, to live in an ambiguous state, to not have to decide what I liked or where things would go. I was in transition in so many ways, and having blank walls in a fresh home seemed like a perfect metaphor (that i got to actually live inside of!) I had all sorts of ideas: weird vintage wall hangings that reminded me of how my grandmother decorated her place, some modernist abstracts (which I admire so much but have a hard time painting myself), PLANTS! Of course this was all in my head. I really didn’t have any extra time or money to bring these ideas to life. And the blank walls have been refreshing in their novelty: lots of mood-lifting reflected light, the illusion of open-space, so much pure potential. Lately, though (and it didn’t take long) that novelty has turned oppressive, and I’ve felt like I’m living inside a swimming pool, with all those unbroken walls rising up around me, closing me in. The tipping point must have come because I decided to take this holiday weekend to finally bring out the hammer and nails and hang something…anything…on the walls around me.
But here is the thing…I had nothing new to decorate with. All that dreaming about how I might like my new habitat to look/feel didn’t really matter because I only have the same things I moved from the last place, the same things I’d moved from the time before, and the time before. Oh there has been some change here and there, of course—I got rid of several pieces of artwork and photos in my grand attempt toward minimalism in my last move—but I haven’t actually acquired anything new, and I realized I really don’t want to, unless something rare and amazing jumps out at me (and it hasn’t.) Four of the six paintings I hung on the dining room wall today have been with me from before I moved them to England. The other two were gifts from Vernon. It was a bit humbling to accept that I’d rather look at the same old things I’ve had for ages than the blank walls of infinite possibility. I have more photos and artwork to put up tomorrow, now leaning on other walls around the house. (I’ve already misplaced my hammer a few times so have given up for now.)
All this has made me think about how little I have actually changed, at least if my collection-of-special-objects gives any indication. Yet for the past year (at least) my mindset has been completely colored by this idea that I’d been so changed by Vernon’s death and all that led to that. I was sure this time was about discovering the new me, someone completely separate from the old me, whoever that was. It was like the rip through my so-called reality had been so extreme that I couldn’t imagine ever reconnecting again. The damage felt too big to fathom. So I only looked forward as if the rope was let go from my spaceship and gravity altogether.
A few other things I’ve learned about have also underlined this new place of acceptance (time will tell how temporary/sustainable this is.) I’ve been interested in reading up on personality types for some time: namely the Meyers- Briggs personality type and the Enneagram (disclaimer: I am apparently the personality type that really gets into studying personality types). I mostly got into this because it helped me understand my children/parenting better and as a parlor game with my siblings as we try to work out our family dynamics. (I wish I’d considered it more in my marriage: I have no doubt I would have understood Vernon better. I’m pretty sure he was an ISFP and probably a 5w4 if you’ll allow me to get nerdy with it.) My advice for grievers or anyone going through a dis-connective change would be to consider reading up on these personality types and finding how your brain relates to the world. I know it sounds cheesy, but when I was involved in grief groups and couldn’t understand why others didn’t grieve like I did, why so few felt the need to be creative with their pain, it made me feel very alienated…but now I understand there is actually some science/psychology to our differences and that none of us are actually weirdos (but we are probably all crazy!) I find comfort in knowing that each of us has a true method to our madness—that it’s not random after all! It’s great to have permission to be yourself…and to figure out who that is.
This is embarrassingly accurate, I’m afraid. Why DOES everyone have to be so complicated? Why? (Find a funny map of your own brain by typing in “your type” +brain in Google images. Disregard the bad spelling.)
In the process of moving this summer, I also rediscovered my MUCH younger self when I found a trunk of old notes and letters, yearbooks, photos from high school and some college that I thought had been gone forever. The most revealing to me in this time capsule was a folder full of poems and essays I’d written as a teenager. They were pretty awful, for the most part, certainly immature and over-the-top, but as I read them, I had to admit that it was the same voice I have now, just a lot younger and more angst-riddled. I was writing about many of the same things I’ve written about throughout my life: similar motivations, fears, dreams, insanities. Ok, I’ve added a few themes to my arsenal like death and loss, but underneath, it was the same voice. I found this rather shocking, and honestly, a little upsetting. Why hadn’t I trusted this voice? Why had I put it down over and over again…when it wasn’t going to change that much anyway, when it would still be with me (even helping me) thirty years later? As much as I thought I’d changed after Vernon died, most of the same stuff is still there after all—and for awhile, that was kind of hard to accept too, but I’m getting there.
We are who we are. We change, yes…a lot. Hopefully we stretch and mature, we become more others-focused and compassionate, we might even get to do some lasting good in the world if we keep trying, but we are stuck with our personalities more or less for life. We might as well celebrate them, might as well decorate our living spaces with them or, at the very least, accept them. They aren’t going anywhere else.
(I wrote most of this last night, but when I got up this morning, and I saw some of my old pictures on the walls. They aren’t new and exciting, but I admit I felt more at home than I have yet. Now I just have to find that hammer…)
by Allison Moore | Oct 26, 2018 | Day by Day |
It’s always a surprise treat when my friend Adrena comes into town from Oregon to visit her family and friends. Although she grew up in the area, I only met her through Instagram about 7-8 years ago, when I wasn’t even living here yet. After I returned, we managed to meet up for a few walks on the beach when she’d happen to be in town. Here is a photo she took of me on the pier the first time we walked… one of my very favorites ever.
I’ve written about Adrena before. She had lost her teenage son (and nephew) in a freak RV accident while on vacation…right before Vernon was to go on to the hospice phase of his life. I remember so clearly phoning on the short drive from my hotel to the nursing home one day, as we both shouted in tears at the awfulness that a friend was in such similar pain. Perhaps this brought us each out of our own numbing shock and we were able to express something bigger for a few minutes. I’ll never forget that phone call. Experiencing something so extreme at the same time bonded us in a remarkably deep way. Now when she comes into town once or twice a year, we try to meet for a beach walk if possible, and its always a very honest, gratifying hour or two—not one precious moment is wasted on small talk.
Yesterday morning we met again. We only had an hour and a half, so I drove to her hotel with coffee and tea and we marched with intention down to the shore. Both Adrena and I are still getting used to living with the post-trauma versions of ourselves. I’ve been seeing a new therapist who is working with me on ‘redecorating’ my head-space, reframing some mindsets that not only aren’t necessary anymore, but are causing problems. So the concept of hyper-vigilance (the fight/flight mentality) that we developed in traumatic situations was fresh on the brain for me. Of course, I knew she would be able to relate. We laughed as we walked, realizing that we are both in places in our lives that we are literally redecorating. I have yet to put more than one piece of artwork on the stark white walls of my new home and she is re-modeling her home of nearly twenty years. It’s okay to take the time to figure out what will serve us best in these spaces as we move into the future…just like its ok to take time to look at our thought-lives and and begin to recognize that much of our coping strategies are not working well for us anymore. For example, we are both becoming aware of the subtle need to be prepared for the inevitable worst all the time. We both struggle with the annoying idea of hope in many ways. We both have a hard time in believing in the best possible future, given that we know so well how the bottom can fall out horribly at any given moment. That’s our experience…so it has become our map. Maybe not a very good map, but one that’s hard to let go of, its been so hammered in to our psyches. It’s quite humbling to acknowledge, to be honest.
HOWEVER….we also have some really great things in common. We both have learned to look for (and find!) the magical moments of connection that bring us joy each day, the small surprises of great beauty that bring us into wonder and take us out of our cynicism. We’ve come to a place of greater appreciation and care of the living people in our lives: our close friends near and far, the children that are still with us. We are grateful for our healthy bodies and try to be active with them. We treasure what good things we have available to us right now. We have learned that life is both/and…not either/or.
Over our hour together, as we walked and shared notes of how far/little we have come since we’d last seen each other, we gathered tiny treasures that caught our attention. Shells and sea-glass mixed with bright micro-plastics washed up on the beach.. We found funny toys strewn in the sand and spotty litter. Part of an animal’s vertebrae (we think.) The natural and the unnatural together. The beautiful and the weird. The right and the wrong. Both/and.
Here is a little still life we made with our collected gifts of the sea. (I especially love the hyper-vigilant army man ready for the possibility of a dinosaur attack—which can CLEARLY happen, here is photo proof!)
“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea.
by Allison Moore | Oct 11, 2018 | Day by Day |
“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.”
― William Blake
I’ve been thinking about the word “threshold”….because we crossed a big one this week. According to the dictionary, not only does it mean a kind of doorway, but also the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested (which, I suppose, is a kind of doorway…but so much more!)
Not only did we move into a new house with a completely different feel (yes, I’m still finding my way around it) but Maki got his driver’s license! The American Youth’s official rite-of-passage (I remember my own well, just as my dad, who taught me to drive, remembers his.) As of Tuesday morning, the first day he left early to get a parking spot at school, drove himself to work afterward, and then went to visit his girlfriend. That’s it…he’s got wheels. He’s independent—a thing I’ve long been encouraging him toward— and with that, we have both crossed over a threshold. Here’s a text after his first drive alone:
He loves it. I love it. Friday he doesn’t work and he’s already told me he will pick up groceries for me after school as well as pick up his sister at her school. I know he’s a good driver because he’s been transporting my other two prized possessions (Justine’s body and mine) for six months. (Why should I worry? I won’t.) And by the way, both our first cars were VWs, which to me is kind of sweet. Thanks to his lovely mother, Synnove, for going in on it with with me. It was nice that we were able to do this thing for him together. He’s happy…even though he has to take care of all the expenses from here on out. He’s very positive and understanding on that end too (so far…)
This was the day I’d been looking toward for so long…and for all the hours spent at the DMV on Monday, I honestly wasn’t quite sure it would happen. After a wonderful summer of entertaining visitors and making sure we had a fulfilling holiday as a family, we started school, but then almost immediately, we moved house, and many of my professional obligations got pushed back further yet. It was great, I loved the season of being full-time family, but I knew I was shirking my financial responsibilities. So here we are…suddenly I feel I have one less child to raise. I can attempt to feed Maki and make sure he has a place to lay his head, I can listen to him, and I can even advise him (on the days he lets me.) But once a kid is driving…and working…he’s a part of the greater world, not just the one adults have offered him. This was my experience at his age, and he says its already the same for him. I’ve never been more proud (of either of us.)
Immediately, that very first day, I could feel the difference in my world. This was the day I’d put on my calendar as the day to get back to the grindstone…and I did. I still have to finish organizing an office and setting up the painting studio, but this week, I was able to get back to those things with clearer intention and momentum. And within another day, I could see the dominos that have been waiting for that push, start to fall down the line: some commissions, interviews, etc. Everything has been waiting for my assurance that Maki is ready for the road. And here we are. I have no excuses anymore. 🙂 We are both filled with relief and potential…and responsibility.
Right on schedule, this week is already turning in some delectable fruit. Yesterday, I went to Chapman University in Orange to visit a type-design class (same as last year) and speak about Vernon’s work. This time, I was treated to the fact that the students were designing posters for a display in the library to honor his work. Here are some photos of the process:
The Type Design professor is hoping to do a greater exhibit of his work next year, funding pending. In the meantime, she introduced me to a co-ordinator who is interested in my own painting work I was offered an exhibit next year, hopefully with a panel from the Women’s Study’s dept…I’ll keep you posted. (The University setting is something I’ve imagined for awhile, and the shared ideas are exciting!) We donated Vernon’s treasury of alphabet source-books to the university library a few months back, so it’s nice to have a continuous connection to this quality school. I’m thankful for every one of these doors.
We are now in our future. And that feels good. There is space, there is momentum, there is focus. I like where we are going.
