Deaf Like the Dog

I have a dog named Ernie. I've probably written of him before--he's also called 'the little orange dog'. Right now, as I write this, he's stirring up commotion in the woods that run down to the shoreline of the lake. All the little chipmunks and squirrels think he's a threat, one giant squirrel perhaps, and they want him gone. They shriek their dissent. Ernie, he's deaf as a doornail. He's placid in his exploration. He doesn't hear the ruckus he's created.

Two nights ago thunder cracked the sky above this lakeside home; split it clean open and then wept--rain on lake water--for an hour or more. We all woke in our beds throughout the house, startled into consciousness; all of us listening; one of us wondering if the automatic sprinkler in the orchard ought to be turned off; one huddling in the bathroom with the old big dog who fears the thunder the most. Ernie sprawled belly-up at the foot of our bed as if the night were silent as a tomb; the next morning we joked that he slept the best of us all.

Dog-deafness to deeper meaning, I'm heading there (I promise), but it's been awhile since I've been here and the muscle that's needed for this is a bit shaky, forgetful of capacity. Here's what I want to say: I haven't written in a few months because I've been frightened to write. Things have been changing--have changed--in some very large and elemental ways, and at the risk of jinxing what I fear every day will be jinxed, I'll just say it: I am deeply content. 'Happy' is too bubbly a word, perhaps, too prescriptive. Too expectant. I won't say that. But I'll say this: This new contentment, this sense of having arrived at some place in myself and in the world that feels centered and long-wanted and good has got me wishing I were a bit blind, a bit deaf, a bit dumb.

I wish I were blind to the things I stand to lose.

I wish I couldn't hear the voices, inside and out, that tell me I might be making a mistake.

I wish I were a fool, content to bask in beauty--as heartbreaking as it can be--wherever I can find it.

My little orange dog, he's happy--blissful--as long as he's got a bowl of clean drinking water. As long as he's fed some scraps morning and night. As long as he's got a few feet of bed to curl up on. As long as I scratch his soft, deaf ears. As long as I am happy to see him. My little orange dog, he's got no idea that his kidneys are failing him, that his heart is growing weak, that he can't hear the sound of my voice calling him. There is no fear of what may come, there is just this moment, and it's enough.

I want to be like Ernie, like my little orange dog. I don't want to be afraid to tell you that I have made some choices that have taken me to a new place and that in that new place I feel like I am finally home. I don't want to be afraid to love as big and silly and openly as I can. I don't want to be afraid to take my work seriously. I don't want to be afraid to be happy. I just want to work to be worthy of my life, and of these good things. It might not work out. I might lose a hell of a lot. I might be just a fool.

So be it.

Ernie doesn't care. Stop writing, he says. Come with me down the stone steps to the lake. Give me the rest of that piece of toast; it was good. He's done stirring up the squirrels. He's at my feet. He'll follow wherever I go, and love me right on through it.

Smart dog. Good dog.




Thanks for reading.

Beth

For May Day: Small Things.

My sister went to a farm and held a baby goat in her arms.
She told me that holding it felt like 'joy welling up within her'.

My mother came to town for a work-week visit and gave me the level-best moment of my whole entire day: a long embrace in late April morning sunshine.

At the house in the remote woods of northern Montana, where the river swells most springs into the fields, where my sister once wrangled the old row boat to float over sodden wheat fields, where at dawn (or any other hour), you can lace on your runners and cross the border into Canada, swift as four miles passing under your determined feet, at this house my father tends to the past, herds away the wild things that live fervently.

My little sister is baby-skinned and blue-eyed and blooming with shy, earnest, comforting love. To my stories she listens.

My old dog is dying, more quickly now, but he still turns over for a belly rub, still sleeps beside me, little curved sweet-potato body. I will grieve this assurance, for pure assurance of unconditional love it is.

The puppy at the park is but six days old, is nothing but soft and steady and eager life.

And small things--watch for them: sunshine on the kitchen floor.

The random act of grace.
The woman who stops you and asks where you got your shoes--linked humanity, just like that. 
The coffee beans are new and shiny with oil.
The job can be done if only you begin.
There will be hot water for washing, cool water for drinking, there will be people happy to see you.
There will be more light in the sky for longer.




Thanks for reading.


Beth

Haircut.

I had a pixie haircut when I was eight years old. My school picture from that year shows a small, shy, dark-skinned girl smiling without showing her teeth (a familiar image--often what I look like in pictures from my twenties, only a couple feet taller and a bit more time-tested). In the picture I wear a white, round-collared dress, a pink bow at my neck. And my hair is very, very short. In fact, were it not for the dress and the bow, I would most certainly be mistaken for an eight-year old boy. I don't remember asking my mother for this haircut, but I'm sure that I did, and my mother--being my mother--patiently granted my request.

I am envious of this little girl. I've recently chopped my hair again, and while there are days when I look in the mirror and like the exposed lines of my face and neck, more days I go out into the world a little afraid; it's one thing to be mistaken for a boy when you're eight, it's quite another to be mistaken for one when you're nearing thirty. So far, this hasn't happened. So far, when I've ventured out, people say kind things, or say nothing at all, or don't pay me any attention. I know, I know: it's just a haircut, you're thinking. Hair grows, girl. Bigger shit is going down. And you'd be right. But for just a moment, I want to say a few things about beauty, and vanity, and humility, because it seems like these are the things that either help or harm us when it comes to embracing the bigger stuff, the truths--minute and enormous--that bring us to our knees.

The haircut wasn't the thing that brought me to my knees; truth is, I was already kneeling when I sat down in the twirling chair and felt the scissors come close to my scalp. The haircut was the reaction; from my knees I was seeking outward motion, some sea change to shake me out of the larger forces that had me down on the ground, struggling to keep going with the new life I'd put into motion, the one that was pissing a lot of people off and painting, for me, a future utterly unknown.

The haircut did the trick. To push the metaphor, I'll just say this: the rest of me--body, mind, soul--was kneeling: in the face of certain truth. I was deep in the down-in-the-mud middle of figuring some big shit out. About myself, the world I was creating, the people I was hurting, the path that was asking to be forged. On my knees, I was humbled, because I wasn't pretending anymore. I was getting (painfully) honest for what felt like the first time in my life. So be it. But the hair wasn't following suit. The girl people saw on the outside--she was still trying to be someone she thought others wanted to see. She was still seeking goddamn approval. So she went to the salon.

Beauty: what the world sees on the outside.
Beauty: how we feel on the inside.

I'm working to embrace the latter. But sure thing, it's hard: the truth that I've begun broadcasting from the inside has suddenly been stripped bare and revealed on the outside. In a haircut.

Now there's new work to do--a big struggle with vanity. A big search for humility. But I'm glad. These lessons I've been meant to learn. And I'm hopeful for the learning: it's easier to learn truly when we learn from a true place. We forget that true place, it seems, as we grow. Our eight year old selves knew it without question: this is what I want because it makes me feel like the person I am.


This is what I want because it makes me feel like the person I am. Some days I look gamine and graceful; some days I look like an eight year old boy who needs a good night's sleep. This is what I see. What I feel? Mostly beautiful. Mostly humble. Mostly true.


Thanks for reading.


Beth

I'm Sorry.

That the dogs are dying. 
That there are miles, two thousand of them or more, between here and there. 
That I didn't get the joke, or like it. 
That I let the garden die. 
That I said too much. 
That I said too little. 
That I didn't try and that I tried too hard. 
That my hair was never long for you. 
That I am so cold all the time. 
That I was mean. 
That I was kind. 
That I was patient and impatient, both. 
That I wrote instead of calling. 
That I called instead of writing. 
That there are so many ways of talking. Just talk. Just listen. 
That I don't like clams. 
That I didn't go to shear the sheep that day. 
That I pretended when I should have been real. 
That I was real when I should have pretended. 
That I was late. 
That I canceled. 
That I said no. 
That I said yes. 
That I disappear. 
That I act rash. 
That I take my time. 
That I know absolutely. 
That I don't know.   
That I didn't ask. 
That I even ask at all. 
That I mouthed the three words instead of giving them sound, every night. 
That I cared too little and too much. 
That I didn't read the books. 
That I am sometimes weak to the bone. 
That I am sometimes so tough I push you over.
That I can't always help you up. 
That I drank that much beer. 
That I can't drink that much beer. 
That I don't want to wake up yet (let me sleep). 
That I didn't wake up and see, and live. 
That I woke up. 
That I listened. 
That I didn't listen. 
That I didn't say I'm sorry. 
That I said it. 
That there is so much and so little and that we've got it all to carry. Your yoke, mine; I'd take them up both, were I able. 

Never for its beginning, nor its good and harsh and honest life. Never for that. 



Thanks for reading. 

Beth

 

 

The Machine

You often feel like you are not enough. You are a person who sometimes makes plans and then cancels them. You have a hard time saying 'no'. You say 'yes' to things you don't really want to do. You want to be able to do everything. You want to be able to be everywhere, at once. You don't want to miss out, or lose your place, or be talked about, or judged. You judge others, sometimes, and this makes you feel like a hypocrite. Is it possible to release all judgment? Perhaps. But it takes practice and time and most of all humility, and it takes these things in harmony over and over again--there's probably no way to perfect it. The human brain--which is something you've got--has a wire in it, that may appear essential, called judgment. Take the wire out and you've got an entirely different machine that might be difficult to drive. 

Try driving it anyway. There are different gears; one that is important is called acceptance, and that's the first gear, the lowest one with the most power. It gets you going. When you learn to drive the machine you first go out with a friend who has some practice with it; she's known you a long time and she is gentle because she sees that you are scared; there are other machines out there and they've got a plan, they're on a path that is their own, they might not be patient if you get in their way. Don't worry; keep driving. 

I'm not sure what the other gears are yet. They might have something to do with love and virtue and that idea of sameness--you know, we're all 'one'. Maybe that's the highest gear, that knowledge. When you get to it, let me know how you did it. I'm still working on gear one and it often gets stuck in the sticky stuff of guilt, and self-doubt, and a tremendous, tremendous fear. But it's like a machine, see? You are a person of common sense, who knows that when a machine isn't getting going, there's something wrong with it. You've got to coax it back to health. The hammer trick doesn't work--you can't beat something into motion, it's got to want to move, it's got to feel propelled, it's got to have energy. It can't feel judged, the animal part of it; and everything's got an animal in it, if we're willing to look and see. 

Judgment makes the animal retreat; it's got a shell for hiding. I bet that shell is pretty damned comfortable, too; I bet there are books in there, and a wood stove that is full of fire, and probably some food the animal likes. Why would it want to come out? Inside, the world is its known world--every floor creak and night noise has become friend, and no one says 'not enough'. In fact, no one says much of anything (except those inside voices, which we've all got--nice ones and mean ones, come on, admit it). In the shell, it's easy to find comfort and rest; it's also easy to get a little bored, a little wan, a little lonely.

So face it: you've got to go outside. Where you often feel like you're not enough. Where you say 'yes' but then say 'no' and worry about losing out. Where you make a shit ton of really unimportant and truly important mistakes, over and over again. Where you judge and are judged in return. Where you begin to wonder if there's another way, if your machine could be re-calibrated. Only this time it's just a tiny bit easier, because you've been out here before. You find that in the swiftest instant your judgment about the neighbor (who does that?) can be replaced by a kind of frank and elemental forgiveness when you see that the man is limping, that the woman carries a broken briefcase, that the son is so shy he can hardly walk from doorway to car, that the dog is just dying, that the daughter is in love for the first time, that they have--every single one of them--been enough and also not enough at the very same time. That they're all machines. All animals with shells and the living hope that one day they'll come out and find something a bit better. 



Thanks for reading. 

Beth

The Worth of Difficult Years

Dear You,

I've been meaning to write, but I've been on break from work and school, and while it was my highest goal to spend that time writing, writing, writing, other impulses took hold, and boredom set in. There has been a lot of bread baking (good stuff!) and dancing about the kitchen to the old Springsteen songs. I'm poor as a pauper but I'm paid in time. And this life, while I'm still young, is a good, young life.

(Note to Us on the refrigerator door: "Work is good for the soul. Remember this. Every morning when I wake up, I'll try to remember it too, and spend the time with coffee at the corner desk where the story is shaping up, where the novel is slowly unfolding itself before me, page by page.")

Here is something that my dear friend Lauren said about her plan for the new year:

"More than anything else, I want this year to be full of doing the right things: when they're easy or when they're hard, when others understand or when they don't, whatever level of courage or gumption or honesty or work or love they require. However joyful or sad they might be."

I thought you might like this, because I liked it, and generally we like the same things, though we don't always tell each other that. The things we both like--what this man said, that quote I pasted to the bathroom mirror, this joke--we discover them like secrets accidentally revealed. You quote the quote from the mirror one month later and I'm stunned to know what you remember, because I remember it too. Our shared life living below the surface.

But I digress. What I have not much revealed but what I guess you may know is: this last year was often a very damn hard and difficult year. I was elated at the turn of the clock to midnight (or hopped up on sugar from the cookies and the pink wine I shared with my mother and my youngest sister, sliding about the wood floor of the kitchen in our winter socks and pajamas, clanging pots and pans in the frozen air over the dog's bark, calling for the darkness to awaken).

The clock turned. And later, searching for sleep, I could hear my father's voice down the hallway in the house where I grew. He was talking to my mother. Then he began to sing an old cowboy song. Third boxcar, midnight train. Destination, Bangor, Maine. My mother laughs her laugh, and I realize what it is that I've been wanting to say:

The difficult years are also often the most worthwhile ones, in the end.

Think of everything you've born. It was actual weight; it had gravity and it was heavy on your heart. It made a carving of your soul, so much so that when you greet the day the greeting is entirely new because the world is somehow new. Without the difficult years, it's easy to remain the same. Before, I thought that staying the same was what I wanted--it was safe, after all. Now, I tell you: I want to be carved.

For it strikes me that the carving makes space for what is most important: pink wine and winter socks and my mother's face. My father singing his beloved a cowboy song, thirty-one years after they first found one another. It's true: nothing else matters but this. Sometimes it takes a beating to make us see.

I'll sign off now, and promise to write you again soon. There's much to do: boxes to unpack in the new house that is mine, a dog to walk up a snowy mountain, plans to be made for the work to be done that is good for the soul, a new year to begin.



Thanks for reading.

Beth

Letters

Today there were a few letters to write. It was a good thing; long I'd put off--no, simply forgotten--to write the letters, but today there was suddenly and blissfully time and mental space for them. Going visiting will do that to you; visiting the house where you were once a child, an angst-filled teen, will do that to you. The place is your own so you're free to do as you'd please, and comfortably--make the strongest coffee upon waking, forget to clean the scattered grounds from the kitchen sink, start your wash and give your old dog free reign. Blessed places, these childhood homes; there's always someone else to do the business of keeping them up, and since you've been gone you're only a welcome, beloved, longed-for presence. You're allowed to sit at the table and write your letters while someone else vacuums the living room. (A promise to any possible future offspring of mine: I'll do the same for you. I'll provide you with such a space.)

There were a few good lines in the letters. One came after three-quarters of an Old Fashioned, a lit Christmas tree and a fire place, a dog curled at my hip. The other was the product of a late morning run through snow, the only act I've ever known in my short life to clear my mind and my soul as purely as they may possibly be cleared; though I've traveled little, I do keep a short list of places I have run, among them a stretch of desert highway at blood-red sunrise just outside Canyon de Chelly, and a spine-curve hilltop of road that drops unabashedly towards the Atlantic ocean.

One letter I sent away that way, ocean-wards. Towards a tiny, salty town whose loneliness I've known, whose loneliness I've both longed for and felt it once in my power to cure. To this person, I should have perhaps written that I wished to cure his loneliness, but it's taken me until my twenty-ninth year if my count is correct to know that none can cure another's loneliness, no matter how desperate the desire. For the moment at the mailbox, for the two hundred and forty seconds it may take to read the letter, for the card with the picture of the country houses swathed in winter's weight pinned to the board above the desk where dreaming and despair alike are undertaken--for these things I've sent the letter, whatever good it might do in reaching out into the world, this wide and difficult place.

In the second letter I wrote about Christmas. It's almost always the shameful case that I've very little money for gifts for the people I love most in this world, and to whom I'd love to give all my money. This is always a result of my own poor choices and an inconvenient romanticism about life's work. And yet time and again when I go about Christmas shopping with my few dollars, I am amazed to see that in the crowded aisle and on the street dirty with mid-December snow there remains that thing which may be called cliche but which is also aptly called good-will. This year, it was in the man in the wheelchair at the photo shop who offered to take me for a ride, and told me that I had a sense of humor. At first I avoided his gaze, feeling myself the brunt of a rude joke, but then felt suddenly that I didn't need any money, none at all. I would have liked to be a different person then; someone who wasn't quite so careful. Someone who might have stood longer with the man and told a dirty joke or two. Such a person I am not. It is a perfectly acceptable and regrettable thing to be the person I am. I often know that God might like me to be better. I often know that he thinks I am doing just fine.

This was the main topic of the final letter, this life as a good-enough but never-good-enough living being. Let me just say that there's perhaps not enough ink or paper to tell all the tales about the mistakes made, the drunken arguments, the words that go right to the quick and you say them knowing they're going there, the broken temper and the practical impossibility of pure remorse. There's not enough paper to tell it all. It seems to me that it's the regrettable self that gets all the ink, all the words. The woman I want to be, when I am her, is happy with a blank page and only a few simple things to say, only a few questions to ask. I'll do my best to be her more often, this woman. I'll put some money aside, and learn a few rude jokes, and wash my coffee grounds down the sink. I'll offer to vacuum the living room for my mother. 




Thanks for reading. 


Beth