Hiding or Healing?

Just have to see where it goes

“It has made me realize that I am no more than human, and that there is nothing I can think or do to change that, and that I must embrace that for whatever it means.” - Lucas Jakobi, Tustin, CA, An Awakening, New York Times.

In this issue:

• Post-vaccine meltdown

• A great short read with some big, beautiful questions

• Poems by Andrew Merton who gives us one by Heather McHugh

The Vaccine is Suddenly the Easy Part

I had my first vaccine on Monday. Piece of cake. I showed up a few minutes early, they took me on time (Costco, the Pfizer “jab”). Then I sat for 15 minutes in a little chair with the book I was finishing (The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute) while Ed gathered a few essentials (boat-sized boxes of salad, spinach, blueberries, etc.) and we went home. For the next 36 hours, things went exactly as the info packet explained: achy, tired, sore arm. Now all that’s over and I’m left with the feeling that I should be more excited than I am.

Instead, I’m kind of a mess to tell you the truth. I wasn’t sure I could put this week’s newsletter together. This has nothing to do with the vaccine but it might have something to do with the expectations I had going into it. I hoped that my first shot would release me from what I must now acknowledge as anxiety, a kind of low-grade, slow-building, creeping, crawling fear that has been waking me up around 1:30 A.M. more and more often. It drove me out of bed Wednesday night after several hours of trying to breathe my way through it, meditate, pray, and, finally, trying to imagine myself back in the comforting arms of my grandmother when I was seven and had had the wind knocked out of me. 

Finally, I got up in the dark and went to my office, opened my journal which often does duty as my therapist. I “talked” on paper but I was talking to myself. I wrote about my fear that I’ve forgotten how to be in a world where people can be close together again, or at least closer. Maybe it is more accurate to say that I’m aware of changes that have unfolded in me since March of 2019. My tendency towards introversion has grown stronger -- to the point when I am not even sure I want to go out even when things are back to normal which is either in a few weeks or a few months or right now depending on your latest news source. The dark, sad side of me has swollen to the point that tears come without warning. I’ll go along, perfectly fine for days or even a couple of weeks, and then the dam breaks. Grief has its own timetable, people say. I’ve also said it and I believe it. But this feels like more than grief. My husband has reminded me gently more than once that I don’t need to interrogate and judge myself over this; I am probably dealing with the cumulative effects of the isolation, violence, loss wrought by the pandemic which might cause this even if my father hadn’t died of Covid, even if my young dog hadn’t died suddenly and painfully in the middle of the night. I know he is right. 

There is a difference, though, between understanding something with my brain and feeling its truth in my body -- and accepting it. I’ve spent a good bit of the past year looking on the bright side, acknowledging the joy of loving and being loved, being grateful for walks, for talks and contact through masks and screens and phone lines -- , even reveling in the freedom from the pull of social interaction. I am acutely aware that I have been fortunate in many ways which makes me feel even worse as well as ungrateful, now.

I like to think of myself as basically resilient, optimistic. As I write these words today, Friday, I sense the presence of that resilience somewhere in the stew of confused feelings still swirling. I gave in last night and took a generic Xanax pill to relax before bed and I slept. It helped. What may be helping more, though, is the knowledge that I am not alone. I came across this question on a social media platform: 

“Anyone else feeling a sort of ( or downright bad case of) PTSD after this year instead of the "elation and bursting joy" that seems to be expected?”

A flood of replies rushed in, including mine, all saying yes. Elation one minute, anxiety the next. Dread. All kinds of messy feelings are swirling around right now if these comments are any indication. 

This morning I remembered something that my mother first told me years ago and that I had to relearn many times since. When a crisis hits, we rise to it. We adapt. We do what needs to be done. Then, just as we are approaching the moment when we will be in the clear, the body and mind seem to sense that it is oaky to let down their guards. And we are vulnerable to all the stuff we’ve saved up, pushed down, managed through. Instead of leaping into the sunlight, cavorting on the beach, making plane reservations, or hugging a newly vaccinated friend, we want to curl up under a pile of leaves to hide. 

Maybe that’s what’s happening -- it’s safe enough now to let down my defenses and let my body and spirit heal. I’m not hiding. I’m healing. 

I like that thought. I’m going to work with it.

Short Read: Choosing What To Leave Behind

“I don’t think I can go back to a “before.” I don’t think I fit into that life anymore.” - Mary Fugate, Punxsutawney, PA for the New York Times

The New York Times reporters recently asked a few beautiful questions about emerging from the pandemic period: What will be different in our lives? Will we go back to living the way that we did before? And what if we do? Do we risk losing something we learned from one long and terrifying year?

As I wrestle with these questions myself, I read what others said with wonder and appreciation for the reminder. Opportunities to choose, to change, to take, or to leave behind are always with us but hard times create moments of clarity that can be precious.

Have you thought about this? Will you go back to living the way you did before March 2020? What do you want to keep from these period? What do you want to let go of?

I would really appreciate the chance to exchange thoughts about these questions. I’ll think about it and add what I come up with to the comments below and invite you to do the same. If you are more comfortable with email, let’s do it that way. Thank you in advance. In the meantime here’s the New York Times special section about Emerging from the Pandemic: An Awakening?

Books

The Beans of Egypt, Maine - One of the most interesting moments in this raw, funny, compassionate novel comes after its last page when author Carolyn Chute explains that the version I read is the “finished” book, not the one originally published to great acclaim in 1985. She kept a hardcover copy at home and kept working away at it until she arrived at a version that satisfied her. Novels, she says, “are like pans of popping corn. There is a moment when all the kernels are popped and fluffy. You can pull the pan off the fire too soon. You can leave it on too long.” As a writer struggling with her second novel, this is something I found myself thinking a lot about.

A lot happens in this book but there is no plot, only a feeling of hope that is replaced with a sense of inevitability with each chapter. The Beans are poor, resourceful, cruel, loving, tough, resilient, violent, independent, and are not well understood by people who live in houses with plumbing, electricity, or central heating which is to say many of those who reviewed the book when it first came out. The primary narrator is Earlene, a neighbor, who is sucked into the Bean clan’s orbit and eventually becomes a Bean by shotgun marriage. It’s worth reading the book just to get Earline’s voice as a nine year old looking out the window at the yard full of Beans next door from the “ranch” house built by her single, pious father who will wash her mouth out with soap if he fins her anywhere near them.

Carolyn Chute is the kind of imaginative, instinctive and intelligent writer who can make you look and keep reading even though you have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that things are not going to work out so well. She describes people who don’t fit in a world that is turning ever more rapidly richer, colder, and selfish but who, nevertheless, prevail.

Currently reading: Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by poet Claudia Rankine. More on this next week.

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Festivals for Readers and Writers

Here are two online festivals for lovers of books and writing. Most of the programs are free or very affordable.

LA times Book Festival April 17-23 - Headliners include Don Lemon of CNN, Walter Mosley, Kristin Hannah, Viet Thanh Nguyen and more but even more intriguing is the chance to sit on discover books and writers and ideas you might have missed along the way. In “real-life” this festival is an amazing event but the online version looks great and you don’t have to fly to LA to see it.

The 2021 Sierra Poetry Festival is happening today and tomorrow and all you have to to do check out a workshop or a reading is click HERE.

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Our Celebration of National Poetry Month: Week 2

Andrew Merton

This week we feature two short poems by Andrew Merton. I knew Andy first as a mentor and teacher who helped to launch me into journalism. Now I admire him as a poet whose honesty, sense of humor, and wit helped to open the world of poetry to me.

Here’s his bio:

Poet Andrew Merton’s journalism and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Glamour, and Boston Magazine. His poetry has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Rialto, Comstock Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Louisville Review, The American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere.  He is the author of  three books of poetry: Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs (with a foreword by Charles Simic) (Accents Publishing, 2012), Lost and Found(Accents Publishing, 2016), and Final Exam (Accents Publishing, 2019).  He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. He can be reached at andrew.merton@unh.edu.

Here are two of Andy’s poems, followed by a poem he wanted to share by Heather McHugh. A note and an apology: I have been unable to recreate the original formatting used by the poets I’ve featured in this project no matter what I try. The formatting and spacing are integral and I worry that something is lost. Wherever possible, I am also including a link to the poem in its original formatting. Some, like Andy’s below, are available in their books.

Climate Change

By Andrew Merton

Black clouds roll in over the old ball field.

I’ve come here alone.

I don’t like being nine

or being me.

Minutes ago the sky was cartoon blue.

Small birds flocked near second base.

Now they scatter as the wind picks up. 

A snake’s tongue of lightning flickers,

the thunderhead roaring 

like some crazed Norse god.

Rain hammers my face.

Never have I felt such peace.

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Keys

By Andrew Merton

At 2 a.m.

In a strange part of town

I lock myself out of my car.

Through the window I can see

my keys in the ignition,

my mobile phone on the seat,

and, on the floor,

a note from a woman:

What has happened?

I feel a terrible distance between us.

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Andrew Merton’s Poem Share

“Heather McHugh has long been one of my favorites.  She’s flat out courageous.  Her poems make you weep, or stand up and cheer, or laugh, or all at the same time (like this one).”

What He Thought

BY HEATHER MCHUGH

for Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy

and, full of our feeling for

ourselves (our sense of being

Poets from America) we went

from Rome to Fano, met

the mayor, mulled

a couple matters over (what's

a cheap date, they asked us; what's

flat drink). Among Italian literati

we could recognize our counterparts:

the academic, the apologist,

the arrogant, the amorous,

the brazen and the glib—and there was one

administrator (the conservative), in suit

of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide

with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated

sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.

Of all, he was the most politic and least poetic,

so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome

(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)

I found a book of poems this

unprepossessing one had written: it was there

in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)

where it must have been abandoned by

the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)

to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.

I couldn't read Italian, either, so I put the book

back into the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then

our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there

we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,

till, sensible it was our last

big chance to be poetic, make

our mark, one of us asked

                                             "What's poetry?"

Is it the fruits and vegetables and

marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or

the statue there?" Because I was

the glib one, I identified the answer

instantly, I didn't have to think—"The truth

is both, it's both," I blurted out. But that

was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed

taught me something about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out,

all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents Giordano Bruno,

brought to be burned in the public square

because of his offense against

authority, which is to say

the Church. His crime was his belief

the universe does not revolve around

the human being: God is no

fixed point or central government, but rather is

poured in waves through all things. All things

move. "If God is not the soul itself, He is

the soul of the soul of the world." Such was

his heresy. The day they brought him

forth to die, they feared he might

incite the crowd (the man was famous

for his eloquence). And so his captors

placed upon his face

an iron mask, in which

he could not speak. That's

how they burned him. That is how

he died: without a word, in front

of everyone.

                     And poetry—

                                     (we'd all

put down our forks by now, to listen to

the man in gray; he went on

softly)—

                  poetry is what

he thought, but did not say.

(You can read this poem with its original formatting HERE.)

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That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading. Please let me know how you are doing and what you are thinking about as we emerge piece by piece from this past year. I really want to know. What are you reading, what do you want to read? All the good stuff. I will add your books (along with all the books mentioned in this newsletter) to our Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org where every sale supports local bookstores and can help us raise money for literacy programs.

Please share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it and invite them to subscribe. Here are some buttons that make both things easy:

Stay well.

Gratefully,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Poem Tracks

Judy Reeves, writer, teacher, and member of the Spark Community offers us the beginning of a poem by Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry.” You can read the whole thing HERE.

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

I can’t wait to see what you send!