Kendall’s Quest:

An artist friend with whom I hope to work more in the future was here for a weekend rich in talk, plans, ideas, feelings, and even a little work: connection in this moment and possibilities for the future, as well as exploration of some web sites with remarkable work on them (more in a post to come). I attended a memorial service Saturday, a time of letting go and letting grief happen while also paying tribute. In the church were photographs of him, his family, his changes, his work; an oil portrait; one of his sculptures. The group that assembled to mark the passing of a remarkable man was as unconventional and various as he was, himself: his sister, his children and grandchildren, church ladies, bikers, artists, academics, hanging buddies, and his Honduran wife’s daughter and her extraordinarily beautiful family. Also on Saturday I got some virulent hate mail connected with something I had mentioned in the blog, which taught me that there are some people I cannot bring into the blog, no matter how important they are to me (about which more in a moment). And I spent a couple of hours at the Menil, looking at the surrealist collection I know so well, at Robert Rauschenberg’s cardboard creations, and at an amazing photography exhibit. [read on]

Two blogs converge for me tonight: Inside Iraq with its first-person account of women trying to reassemble the body parts of their nephew (horrifying, but until we can find something more effective to do, at least we can bear witness), and Joan Halifax’s Blog with May Swenson’s poem, which frames the only question I can hold after reading Inside Iraq. [read on]

Back in the early 80s I used to read (usually on my friends’ refrigerators) a cartoon strip I loved, called Dykes to Watch Out For. I haven’t seen one of those strips in years, but a friend just sent me a link to a blog of the same name, written by the cartoonist herself. The strip still exists and is widely syndicated and read, apparently; the cartoonist/author has recently written an autobiography; and there she is, Alison Bechdel, bless her, writing a deliciously literate and thoughtful blog, attracting MASSES of commenters who discuss & argue about interesting subjects like celibacy, bipolar disorder, and the ethics of writing autobiography, among other things. [read on]

That was quite a break. Actually, I was deeply immersed in writing the piece I alluded to weeks ago, the piece that was bringing up all my inadequacies. In the course of preparing that piece, I read a great stack of books about Argentina and several about South Africa, including Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s A Human Being Died That Night, about which more in a moment. Finally, the writing project is done, for now. Today, for a break, I watched a movie (on DVD, of course, the only way I ever watch movies now): IN MY COUNTRY, in which Juliette Binoche plays an Afrikaner opposite Samuel Jackson’s American (much easier role). The film, based on Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull , which is sitting by my bed but which I haven’t yet started reading, wiped me out. [read on]

I got all the papers graded. I’ve laid out five of the eight pages of The Midnight Special, I’ve realized that maybe the piece of writing due January 31st can be easier than I envisioned, and I can’t bear to think about the next round of classes. Instead, it’s New Year’s Eve, a time I love to reflect on the gifts of the passing year and to hold the whole planet in my heart with gratitude, compassion, and tenderness, so how could I not blog this day? [read on]

Points of clarity arrive. Last night a great sea-fog enveloped Houston, and swirling mists in the urban sky arranged themselves in auras around pink-orange spotlights towering over Highway 59. I gazed out the glass wall between my living room and the balcony, gazed into the night in wonder. Fog! If I could draw or paint, I would. Writing is another way to meet the moment. It has its ironies–by the time I find words for this moment, another has arrived. Now it is Saturday morning, the sky is thick with curling grays and whites and smudges of blue; the spotlights over the expressway are merely chrome against the sky, and the magic has passed. The Friday night sky-scape disappeared before I found words for it. However words are the medium I have reveled in since I was six; writing is part of how I breathe and be. Writing gives me focus, slows me down, concentrates my attention, allows me to meet the moment and savor it. Fog. Inner and out fog are miraculous. Maybe there will be a time for me to let writing go, but that time hasn’t come yet. So I continue. Why blog? Blogging is how I connect with other people, known and unknown, who happen to be on the planet with me in this dot of time. The comments from David, Lynda, Christopher, and Constance gave me joy and were a comfort, much as Pooh’s friends’ hanging their clothes over his legs consoled him when he was in a tight place. My community of good friends and like-minded beings is flung wide over the globe, and I note with some surprise that I have become a solitaire. When did that happen? I see students every day, of course, but I’m happy with the boundaries around our relations. I see John once a week when we go to the prison together, though we will now take a break till mid-January. Other than John, there is no peer or comrade I see or talk to as often as once a week. That comes as a surprise to me and is, I know, unusual in American culture. I don’t have a cell-phone, seldom use a LAN phone, don’t in the course of my day announce my whereabouts to anyone. The quiet in my life suits me. I have time to read, watch movies, walk, and go my quiet way without having to explain myself to anyone. That has not been easy to arrange for myself, and I cherish the odd life I’ve created. But there is something in human connection that is nourishing, warming, consoling. The blog feeds that sense of connection. And so here I am. Continuing.

Reading or listening to Eckhart Tolle , I fall silent. As Tolle observes, ego generates pointless activity, useless words. Why speak (or write)? What is there to say? Tolle questions the usefulness of thinking, feeling, and doing. Better to BE, and be part of the seamless all. That should be joyful, powerful. Instead there is this feeling of loss, confusion. I don’t mind that; I look at it. It is neither joyful nor sad. Lost. The voice of the blog falls silent. “She” (the voice) has lost her amour propre and doubts she has anything worthy to say. Worthy–that old song. Judgment arises and with it discomfort. The person who uses the pronoun “I” is disoriented, groundless, accompanied by old habits of self-judging. As this disorientation continues, I notice some sadness (the “pain body” perhaps). What will take the place of the old yawp? There was an exuberant energy in blogging, a feeling of connection with “unique visitors” on the journey at the same time. Travel notes. Now, troubled by the possibility that on some ultimate threshing ground, nothing in my life could possibly have meaning for anyone else, there is disconnection, isolation, uncertainty, as though I were suddenly dropped off in the middle of a swamp in a fog. Beautiful lighting effects, strange echoes, everything indistinct. I make my little noise. This blog. The keys on my computer echo in the quiet of my apartment. In the near distance, beyond the trees and on the surface of the expressway, I hear the roar of traffic. Around the block, at the mall, there is Christmas music playing and the slap of debit cards being swiped. I have lost the way. How interesting. Now what?

Yesterday I was full of sadness. Inadequate sleep, a change in medication for migraines, end-of-semester weariness, and holiday blues each contributed its flavor to my little cup of bitter melon tea. I felt sorry for myself, and although I tried to lift myself out of the mire of ego and use my personal sadness to connect with others, I basically ended up sucking my thumb. I’d spent Friday night watching Akira Kurosawa’s beautiful film from 1952, Ikiru, and I’d started listening to an audio version of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. I wanted to say something about Kurosawa and Tolle, and I hoped to get myself out of the funk, but it didn’t work. So this is the wonder of cyberspace. I just went back and deleted that whole post. Wiped it out! Yes. Hit delete, left that moment lying in its mire, and moved on. Ah, so much better. Some moments in life are better deleted. I don’t, however, want to delete Ikiru, which stays with me and haunts me with its beauty and tender, faint optimism. I not only watched the very slow progress of the two hours and twenty-three minutes of the film, I then turned on the commentary and listened to an insightful film critic talk about the shots, camera techniques, actors in the film, and social and political context of Japan in 1952 as I watched it a second two hours and twenty-three minutes. Today I continue listening to Tolle, alternately falling asleep to his voice and then waking up (really waking up) and laughing out loud at my own hilarious struggle with what he calls “egoic mind,” particularly in the realm of the roles I play as teacher and parent. Instead of trying to write more, I am going to listen to Tolle some more, drift and dream, probably fall asleep again, and wake to watch the vivid yellow and deep purple pansies on my balcony blow against the gray sky on this quiet afternoon.

As blogging becomes increasingly central to the way I live, I am looking around at other people’s blogs, wondering about other bloggers’ intentions, and realizing that the blogosphere offers me the opportunity to do what I have wanted to do all my life: peer into thousands of people’s living spaces. Sadly, these living spaces are only those of the privileged 1% of humanity who have computers and the time to fool around on them, and most of the blogs of that 1% are not even remotely interesting to me, but access is the first subject I thought about when I opened this blog, so there’s no need to belabor that further. I write today in celebration of an extraordinary blog called Contemplating Sintra, written by a man named Stephen Brody, who has lived in Sintra, Portugal for the past twenty or so years and writes about the town (which my dear readers may recall was my least favorite town in all of Portugal) with love, wit, and often-ascerbic intelligence. If I had read his blog before I went to Portugal, I would have had a completely different (and far more pleasurable) experience in Sintra; but more importantly, reading his blog expands my notion of what a blog can be, and I want to pass that expanded notion on to the four or five people who read this one. [read on]

OK. Now I see. All my blog-entries between August 17 and September 22 were lost in cyberspace when WordPress had a server crash. Blogs, like meditation, may begin with good intentions, drift away, wander, get lost, and begin again. I begin again today, with a new blog-look and a fresh intention. No more illusion that cyberspace is a safe place to store things. Great lesson for a Buddhist. Everything is impermanent. [read on]