Blog

Today I’m guest posting over at Janet Oberholtzer’s blog. It’s a post about prison, Andy Dufresne, and how spending time each day doing just one thing you love might set you free. But now Into the Heart of a City…

The National Rail trains from Wendover into London mostly had plush, cloth seats and white lighting. The people traveling in them wore suits and  ambivalent expressions. There was a smoothness to those trains as they cut through the English countryside and eased safely against the outer edges of the city.

But the tube trains, which we caught in Amersham (one stop closer to London), had yellow lighting, and the cracked vinyl seats oozed white, scratchy stuffing. The floors were stained, and at 5:45 in the morning most of the inhabitants were drunk or homeless. These tube trains limped along, clicking and clacking on tracks that, once in the city, vanished into the soot-filled underground.

Once, after living in the city for two weeks during a store’s grand-opening, we emerged into the countryside, amazed at the green, living smell in the air as well as the black mucus we coughed up for a week.

My train-ride into London during the early days of our business involved waking at 5:00am, showering, and driving twelve minutes to Amersham so that I could catch the 5:42 to Baker Street. I found a place on a side street where I could park without paying. I slept on that train every morning but only missed my stop a few times. It was a cold, ratchety, Inception-like experience.

At Baker Street I changed from the Metropolitan to the Bakerloo lines, traveled two stops south and changed again, this time boarding the Victoria Line at Oxford Circus. I was still mostly asleep, but walking. Two more stops to the south and I reached my final destination.

Victoria Station, even at 6:30 in the morning, heaved with people. Trains came and went, spewing their humans like blood being pumped into the heart of the city.

A warm breeze whipped up the stairwells from the tube to the street, smelling mostly of diesel fuel and urine. Pigeons strutted everywhere on their disfigured legs, some so twisted that they literally walked on the tops of their feet (I always imagined this resulted from their determination to perch on power lines and third rails, but I have no proof of this).

They fought over any crumb or bit of food dropped by the passengers, angrily flapping their wings at one another, their necks jerking and snapping to tear the morsel. Then, if someone approached, they rose up in a cloud of feathers and dust, up, up, up into the old iron rafters where they settled and stared.

My brother-in-law referred to the pigeons as rats with wings.

Given just as much attention by the travelers were the people discarded by the city, hoarding their own warm corners of the otherwise freezing cement and rock and brick. They stared in one direction, vacant looks, assuming the world held nothing more for them. Some had small tin cups or mugs or hats or instrument cases in front of them, littered with coins and the occasional five-pound note. They were worse off than the pigeons, who at least had wings, and hope.

Sometimes, at night, when we had leftover soft pretzels, we’d take them out to these people without wings. The prospect of food brought them out of nowhere, like spirits emerging from every crook and cranny, ever skinny alley and grated stairwell. They pounded their fingerless-glove covered hands together like muffled cymbals, smiled their toothless grins, held out eager hands. Their shoulders, clenched up around their ears in the cold, poked against thin coats.

They were amazed that someone had remembered them. I guess just being thought of, even by a stranger in a baseball cap carrying an American accent, has a way of stirring your soul.

“Thanks, mate,” they said, half a cinnamon-sugar pretzel already clogging their mouth. Walking away, they brandished the bag of pretzels over their head, shouting to their buddies. “Free pretzels!” followed by a choking laugh. Back into the shadows.

Such a small offering. Nothing really, just a bit of sweet dough.

* * * * *

You can check out other posts about our time in England HERE.

Currently I live on two acres of Paradise. Literally – my town is called Paradise, zip code 17562. My views are unobstructed by man-made objects: to the north, a horse pasture; to the east, a grove of trees; to the south, a forest-covered hill, to the west, grass and some more trees (and a long stone lane which is, technically, man-arranged, but the stones are 100% earth).

Sometimes I crave the close confines of a city. Here are a country-dweller’s top 10 reasons for living in the city (feel free to correct my naivete in the comments section below):

1 – Walking is underrated. Living in the city would mean I could walk just about anywhere that I needed to go.

2 – Cars are overrated. See #1.

3 – Cities are generally 2-3 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside (yes, right now it is winter – this may not be a benefit in the summer months).

4 – The guy in the coffee shop who has no good reason to be there. Which is, of course, the best reason of all to be in a coffee shop.

5 – Usually people in the cities are the ones that survive all the big disasters and end-of-the-world type catastrophes. At least, that’s what happens in the movies.

6 – I like getting lost in crowds of people and the feeling that I am connected to this mass of humanity.

7 – Manhole covers.

8 – Trees that spring up in the midst of sidewalks, growing out of four square feet of soil.

9 – Door buzzers, to which the person in the corresponding room says, “Yeah?” and you say, “It’s George,” and they respond, “C’mon up.”

10 – Using a broom handle to poke the ceiling, conveying the message to your neighbors upstairs that they need to keep it down.

So, city folks, what am I missing? We’re not going anywhere anytime soon, but you could try to change my mind…

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Andi Cumbo, a great writer and even better friend. Enjoy.

Grief. I don’t even really know what that word means. Before, I always used it to explain people’s odd behaviors in times of loss – sleeping ten hours a night; losing patience at an apparent nothing; times of blaring, deep silence. Yet, I didn’t really know what I was saying. How could I?

Apparently, this is a time of grief for me. My mom died, at the age of 63, on Thanksgiving Day. Not even two months ago. She was sick for three months with this bout of metastatic melanoma, but she carried the cancer around in her body and, I think, her mind for more than 36 years, since the year before I was born. In some sense, then, I had lived with the potential for grief for years.

Then, it bowled me over. It began before Mom died when she could no longer communicate. When her words passed away, my relationship to her seemed to die also. All I had wanted was more time.

Yet, all I had were words, so I started to write . . . just little snippets for my blog, at night when the house got quieter and most everyone else was sleeping or doing a puzzle or staring into space as we were all wont to do. I would write about the thing that had gutted me most that day – Mom’s lavender eyeglasses that she rarely got to wear, the way people’s kindness warmed my spirit, how Mom’s whispers reached my ears – and I could get through that day.

People – particularly my parents’ friends – would read my words and take comfort or find tears. They would tell me they appreciated my gift, my words, and I would take strength from their own language. We slogged through together.

I still can’t define grief, even in the midst of it, maybe especially in the midst of it. But each day, I define my experience of it that day through my blog or in my journal or in the book I’ve started about Mom. Each day I pull a tiny pebble of the pain out into the light, and I write it into a gemstone (or at least I try.) There’s a massive pile of rock to take from, a cairn of grief that I will never disassemble. Yet each day, word by word, I add a piece of glory back into the cairn, a ruby of words, a sapphire of language to try to transform the darkness of grief into the light that was my mom’s life.

****

Andi Cumbo is a writer and writing teaching who blogs at http://www.andilit.com. Currently, she is working on a book about, well, she’s not sure yet. She lives with her patron saint, her dad, who has graciously taken her in so that she can write and grieve.

The following discourse used to make me want to ram a Twizzler up someone’s nose:

“Hey, how’s it going?” I would ask.

“Living the dream, man, living the dream,” they’d say.

* * * * *

But now, I am, for lack of a better phrase, “living the dream.”

This is to no credit of my own – the business I ran had stalled for two years straight and Maile and I ran out of money. In fact, we ran out of negative money. So I can’t say that I made this huge leap on my own, look at how smart I was to do it, and now I’m writing for a living.

It was pretty much forced on us.

* * * * *

But what about those of you out there who are also “living the dream”? (yuck, please give me an alternative way of saying that in the comments)

Did you make a conscious choice at some point to do what you had always wanted to do? If so, what did you do to make it happen?

Or did fate force your hand?

Have you ever felt like your soul was wandering around in darkness? Have you ever felt emotionally confused or depressed or overwhelmed with a sense of mourning?

“The dark night of the soul” was a phrase first used by the Spanish mystic St John of the Cross in 16th century.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”

* * * * *

In the book of John a man came to Jesus at night, perhaps because he wanted to avoid the inconvenience of the large crowds that followed Jesus during the day. Perhaps because the man was a Pharisee, and it wouldn’t have been a good career move to be seen with Jesus.

But whatever the reason, for convenience or secrecy, I find it remarkable…that Jesus accepted him. Jesus didn’t berate his laziness or the cowardly nature of his visit, coming under the cover of darkness. In fact, this was one of the first people with whom Jesus shared the purpose of his life:

God sent his son not to condemn the world, but to save the world.

* * * * *

Imagine walking on a path at night. You have a flashlight, but there’s someone walking in front of you who doesn’t, and they keep tripping. Would you walk up behind them and smack them over the head with the light? Would you walk up beside them and shine the light right in their face? Would you just pass them and leave them in darkness once again?

No.

You’d probably walk up and join them, keeping the light low so you didn’t blind them, invite them to walk beside you so that you could both see better.

* * * * *

This makes me wonder: how do I interact with people who come to me during a dark night of their soul? When someone comes to me to mourn, do I mourn alongside them, or do I try to cheer them up? When a friend confides in me about a difficult decision they’ve made (a choice I might see as unhealthy or risky or just plain dumb), do I pound them over the head with the light of truth, or do I walk up beside them, illuminating their path with a loving presence, perhaps even dimming my light at first so that it doesn’t blind them?

* * * * *

The writings of St. John of the Cross make it evident that this dark night through which the saint traveled actually made the light brighter. Without the blackness of night, he would not have been drawn to the burning flame.

If you are in the middle of one of these dark nights of the soul, keep your eyes open. A light will come.

If you have a friend walking in the shadows, move up beside them, put your arm around them, travel with them.

* * * * *

Come out to The Red this week as we talk more about “Night.”

Have you been through a dark night of the soul? What was it that helped you through?

Janet Oberholtzer is an extremely amazing person whose story is full of strength, pain and perseverance. A huge thanks to her for guest-posting here today. You can follow her blog or read about her memoir in the works HERE.

Seven years ago, my husband and I want a change, so we sell everything – house, property, business – and go on a once-in-a-lifetime-year-long trip around the states with our three boys.

Six months into the trip, in the middle of a perfect California day, our sweet adventure comes to an abrupt halt when our motor-home accidentally meets five semi-trucks. Thankfully my husband and boys aren’t hurt.

Unfortunately I am hurt … bad. The kind of bad that not many people survive. The kind of bad you read about in the Reader’s Digest drama stories. I am unconscious. There’s blood, too much blood, flowing from multiple wounds and fractured bones.

I wake up twelve days later to find out I flirted with death for a few days (there are no words to describe hearing that) and that my leg was almost amputated. I find out I had dozens of surgeries and rods, screws and hundreds of staples hold the lower half of my body together. After a week or two, I ask for a journal and a pen … two things I had often used to help process life. I’m sad to discover that between my condition and the pain meds, I can’t write. I can’t even spell words, much less complete a sentence. I spend two months in the hospital, followed by more surgeries and endless hours of physical therapy.

Friends and family offer priceless support … love, help and gifts. Of the gifts, the journals are my favorite (there are many). I run my hand over each cover and look at the bare pages, planning to fill them. Sporadically I pick up a pen … but writing seems to take more energy than I have.

My body recovers better than predicted. My mind and spirit do not recover well. I struggle with the pain, the limitations and the deformed leg I now have. I shove the journals under my bed … they are a painful reminder of the me I lost. I do not like the new me.

Depression sucks and one dark night I decide I’m done. I’m finished. Life hurts too much. I reach for a … pen. I write my obituary.

Something deep inside of me is stirred when I see my obituary. I don’t like it and I don’t like how short it is. I realize I do not want to die, I want to live. But I don’t know how to live with the new me … I need help.

Good counselors help me find my way. Along with other things, they encourage me to return to writing. To be honest and real. They remind me God is big enough to handle anything I write … even my disappointment with life and my anger at him.

Word by word … I ask. I tell. I wonder. I curse. I cry. I grieve. I pray. I breathe.

My body needs exercise and my spirit needs beauty, so I walk at a local lake with a journal in hand. I sit on my favorite bench. Trees, water, birds, moss … it’s all beautiful. I am still and absorb it. I write … some days a few words, other days I fill pages. I find hope. And I find myself again … albeit a new me with a new normal.

People suggest I write a memoir. Knowing what writing does for me, I take on the challenge. Writing a book is harder than I ever imagined it would be. I study writing, go to conferences and critique groups. I quit a hundred times. Finally I have a rough draft … and then the real work begins. I’ve learned good writing happens through rewrites and edits. Oh good Lord, help me!

And that’s where I am today … rewriting, editing and learning more about myself. Some days I’m sick of me, myself and I. Can I write about you now? Yet I must and I will finish my story … word by word. Because words have saved my life too many times not to continue.