the chair is old enough to vote. . .

by bam

i’ve raised a blog, it seems, from birth to the verge of being grown-up. eighteen years: 12.12.06 it all began. 1,200 posts before today, so this––wondrously (to me, anyway)––is 1,201. at first i tended it, this conversation, this wondering aloud, this occasional epiphany, every weekday for a year, then chiseled it down to thrice a week. and then, yet again, i distilled it: once weekly––religiously every friday morn. here and there i’ve taken rare short breaks. a bit of summer breather once or twice.

and yet, kept on. and on and on. (sometimes wondering if maybe i should just be quiet.)

cycled through waves who’ve pulled up chairs in ebb and flow as of the tides. friends who’ve come to stay awhile, then shuffled off for one reason or another. at least a few i’ve deeply loved have died; angels still among us. some who’ve pulled up a chair have never ever strayed. here from the beginning, faithful as the day is long. bless them. bless and bless and bless them. 

i too have ebbed and flowed. waded into deep and deeper waters. shed old fears, grew courage. been puzzled. pondered. hatched new fears. wobbled. stumbled. inhaled courage again, again, and again. i’ve wondered and worried aloud. weathered aching heart, and phone calls and headlines that left me breathless. i’ve loved and loved some more. i intend to never stop. 

my school at first was all that unfolded under this old roof, where creaky twisting stairs and a nearly antique Garland stove––six burners, flattop, quasi-oven, a behemoth you’d find at any all-night diner––came to animate so many stories. it was my boys from whom i mostly learned and learned the most. and learned and learned again. and of course the holy earth and heavens high above: the gardens, the birds, the trees, the stars and moon, the dawn and dusk and nighttime’s inky darkness that never fail to draw me in. the book of nature, i’ve come to read, where lessons rise and fall season after season after season. i found a holy peace in this old house and the ramshackle plots where i kneel with trowel and soul wide open. i’d been chasing that peace for years. 

i seem to have stumbled into a new teacher these days, one i’d never thought could bring such knowing: it comes with darkness, yes, though i’m reminded that darkness is the embryonic space where stirrings first begin. and it’s nighttime’s darkest hour when stars most brightly shine. stripped of distraction, of the nettlesome sorts of things that blur our everyday, it denudes us to our barest essence. it’s cancer (even when i do not name it here it’s ever present in my rumblings, and has catapulted me to highest most-reverent attention). mine is an especially wily iteration, one that doesn’t follow rules. and brings me squarely into the land of uncertainty. where i, a girl who likes to know things, am finding out how not knowing whittles the knowing to one or two immutables: love is the force that triumphs over all; its alpha and omega, the God who dwells within. within me, and you. and even all the ones who make us want to scream and run for cover. 

here’s what i know 18 years in: there is nothing that love––true, deep love in all its iterations––cannot infuse. and in the infusing, molecules are stirred, shifted, and forms reshaped, dissolved, emboldened, made new. i’ve felt mountains move. i’ve felt fear melt away, like butter on hot biscuits. i’ve felt surrender––holy, holy “thy will be done.”

and a life well lived is one in which we love as unstintingly, as capaciously, as we might never have known possible. to live a life of loving is to scatter the few seeds that might blossom in our wake, that might rise in the seasons beyond us. it is the deepest mark i hope and pray to leave: to know my heart, my soul, has found a way in, forever in, to those whose lives i might have touched. 

it all becomes so spare, so simple, in the end. when you realize your days––for as long as they stretch––are your one rare turn to hone the art of loving, as it is meant to be. as it is meant to make the holy difference. to trace the path from here to heaven. 

that’s some of what i’m thinking eighteen sweet years in.

and now, because the older i get the more i glean from the wisdom of those who’ve left their trace, here’s my birthday bouquet to ponder for the day, the week, the hour…an indelible quote, a poem to make you laugh, and one to maybe melt you….

first, a quote from the french philosopher and playwright gabriel marcel, from the mystery of being:

“You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die.”

a poem that might make you laugh, and certainly leave you with a smile:

Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
BY DAN VERA

I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house. 
It happened like this:

One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn. 

When they read her name aloud
she made her way to the stage
straightened the papers in her hands —
pages and envelopes, the backs of grocery bills,
she closed her eyes for a minute,
took a breath, 
and began. 

From her mouth perfect words exploded,
intact formulas of light and darkness.
She dared to rhyme with words like cochineal
and described the skies like diadem. 
Obscurely worded incantations filled the room
with an alchemy that made the very molecules quake.

The solitary words she handled
in her upstairs room with keen precision
came rumbling out to make the electric lights flicker.

40 members of the audience 
were treated for hypertension.
20 year old dark haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.

Her second poem erased the memory of every cellphone
in the nightclub,
and by the fourth line of the sixth verse
the grandmother in the upstairs apartment 
had been cured of her rheumatism. 

The papers reported the power outages. 
The area hospitals taxed their emergency generators
and sirens were heard to wail through the night.

Quietly she made her way to the exit,
walked to the terminal and rode back to Amherst. 

She never left her room again
and never read such syllables aloud. 

and finally, a christmas poem that just might melt you, as it melted me. . . 

Kenosis
by Luci Shaw

In sleep his infant mouth works in and out.
He is so new, his silk skin has not yet
been roughed by plane and wooden beam
nor, so far, has he had to deal with human doubt.
He is in a dream of nipple found,
of blue-white milk, of curving skin
and, pulsing in his ear, the inner throb
of a warm heart’s repeated sound.
His only memories float from fluid space.
So new he has not pounded nails, hung a door
broken bread, felt rebuff, bent to the lash,
wept for the sad heart of the human race.

thank you, with all my heart, for pulling up a chair, be it only for awhile, or for some or all these years. i am holding especially close against my heart this morning ginny, my once closest reader (my beloved mother in law who was quick to call if she liked what she’d read, and deafeningly silent if she did not!), mary ellen, and ceci, who waft over my shoulder, angels to my every day….and especially to my boys, who animate each and every pulse of my heart and every breath i breathe….(and certainly to will, who got this whole thing started, when he insisted i could do it, and built the website to make it happen….)  xoxo love, bam

how did you find the chair?