37days

Love your broken tooth

I don’t know the names of my teeth.

Do you?

Oh, sure, I know “Front Tooth” and “Back Tooth,” but that’s the extent of my dental lexicon.

So, I can’t tell you the exact name of it, but I broke the Tooth- Beside- The-Front-Tooth in half a few weeks back. Did your mother ever tell you never to open a plastic bag with your teeth? Turns out the woman knew what she was talking about. I was desperately trying to open a bag of Ginger Chews because they, quite frankly, are the nectar of the gods and I harbor just the teeniest addiction to them. As in I must stop at the Metropolitan Market in West Seattle to find them before boarding a cross-country flight or there’ll be hell to pay at 37,000 feet. Hypothetically, of course.

So there it was, half gone. HALF GONE. I tried sticking it back on with toothpaste. It is called tooth PASTE after all. That didn’t work. They lie. They should just call it tooth cream. I had just bought new wax earplugs to survive any snoring that might or might not take place in my home, so I cut off a tiny corner of one of the earplugs to try to stick the tooth remnant back on. No go. I tried sticking a Chicklet onto the stub so you couldn’t notice, at least from a distance. That worked from 50 feet, but was noticeable if you got any closer than that, and it kept dissolving and falling off, which might have been more disconcerting to the viewer than the broken tooth. Plus I had lunch meetings to go to and couldn’t figure out how to eat with a Chicklet stuck on my tooth-beside-the-front tooth (let’s call him Reet for the sake of abbreviation)

I hadn’t been to the dentist in a while. A year or so ago, he had told me I needed some dental work done, but, frankly, I didn’t have the money for what he needed to do, so had to put it on hold.

When Reet fell off with great abandon, I dialed the dentist’s office.

“My tooth-beside-the-front-tooth just broke in half!” I shrieked in a not-moving-my-head kind of way. “Can I get in to see the dentist today?” I asked, thinking of all the meetings I had scheduled, including one an hour later that day. What would people think if I showed up with half a tooth?

“Well, Patti,” the receptionist said. “I see you haven’t yet come in to have the dental work done that the dentist suggested.”

Um. What does this have to do with my current tragedy, I thought to myself.

“No, I really haven’t been able to afford it,” I answered. “But this is kind of an emergency.”

“Well,” she hesitated. “I’m going to have to see if the dentist still wants to see you as a patient.”

Blink.

What will it take?

Today, I feel the claustrophobic feeling I had when 9/11 occurred, when Katrina hit, when the tsunami swallowed people up, when I first toured Auschwitz as a teenager. It is the weight of knowing, the knowing we must all hold. Once we know, we can't not-know.

If my town were in Myanmar, given the new estimates of 78,000 dead, we would all of us be dead--the nice man at the Piggly Wiggly, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a cupcake shop, and everyone else here. Not to mention the 56,000 still missing.

And if my town were in Sichuan province, most of us--dead.

And so, we look for what we can do. Perhaps the most significant thing we can do from where we are is  to write "Myanmar" on a slip of paper and write "Sichuan" on a slip of paper, drop them in our god box, and send an outpouring of love to all those who have lost their families, who have lost the nice man at the corner market, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a noodle shop, their whole incredibly meaningful, special, fragile, beautifully mundane, human worlds.

If Prayer Would Do It

If prayer would do it
I’d pray.

If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.

If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he has free.

If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.

If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a blackbelt.

If anything other than love could do it
I’ve done it already
and left the hardest for last.

- Stephen Levine

Thanks, Lee, for sending the perfect poem for this day.

Missing and forever missed

Do you know exactly what you were doing and where you were twenty-eight years ago today?

I do.

Daddy is missing and forever missed.

She had me at "cow town"

Oh, my.

I love to shop on Etsy. Real artists making art. I've made a conscious commitment to buy handmade.

My dream is to create a small shop at 37day.net that will include only handmade objects that relate to my blog and book (did I mention I've written a book?), so in service to that vision, I've been exploring Etsy to find artists whose work I love, then asking if they are interested in creating 37days art. (Are you interested? Please provide a link to your work in the comments!)

One day last week, I found beautiful tiles with words on them. My very favorite color. I wrote to ask.

Rachel wrote back. Turns out, that the very day I wrote to her was Day 37 of a big life change. She was struck by the synchronicity. So was I. Said she'd love to create some prototypes of tiles with the six practices for intentional living that are outlined in LIFE IS A VERB.

When she sent the photos of them, I burst into tears.

There is something about seeing art made from your words that defies description. I felt that way, too, when all the amazing art flowed in from readers around the world to illustrate the book.

I loved the tiles. Wanted to tile my kitchen so I'd see the six practices every morning when I wake up and stumble in there to make coffee. Wanted to tile my shower so I could meditate on them in the steam. Wanted to create a path of them in my garden. Wanted to carry them all in my handbag so when people irritate me as they are wont to do sometimes AND ESPECIALLY THIS WEEK FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON IS THERE A PLANET IN RETROGRADE?, I could reach in and feel the outline of the words and calm myself right down. I sent the photographs to Mr Brilliant:

"It must feel pretty good seeing your words incised in something (that isn't a tombstone). AND HEY:  speaking of tombstones, looks like she lives in the city where Oliver Loving is buried--remembered, Goodnight-Loving Trail? It was the promise Charlie G made to Oliver to carry his rotting corpse back to TX that inspired old Larry to write Lonesome Dove. So Oliver's trail ended there--she could probably drive there in 15 minutes and put a pebble on his grave if she was so inclined. Your potter lives a few miles from where the trail began for one of your favorite books. Pretty poetic. You should share with her--its a good story."

I think Larry McMurtry's novel, Lonesome Dove, is a Great American Novel. In fact, Mr Brilliant is working on a book about the series of McMurtry novels that are connected to Lonesome Dove. That's how much we like it.

I sent his story to the potter. "Yes!" she wrote back. "We DO live near where Charlie Goodnight is buried - at the Greenwood Cemetery - AND we live off of Greenwood Road. AND Lonesome Dove is one of OUR favorite books too - at LEAST once a year, we get out our Lonesome Dove CD set and watch the entire thing yet again.  We know it by heart. AND -  MY husband's name is Larry.  SO many parallels.  It is Synchronicity and  Serendipity."

She continued: "When I first read the book, Lonesome Dove, I was trail riding about once a month, living in Austin, and I grieved for an entire month when I finished it.  For Gus, AND for the book itself, that it was over.  I was so profoundly moved by that story and completely taken and emotionally involved with all of the  very colorful characters - of course, especially Gus McCrae.  And now I live here - at least 20 years later."

Synchronicity and Serendipity. Her beautiful Life is a Verb tiles will be available for sale (either individually or in a set of 6) soon in the 37 days shop. Do you like them as much as I do?

Poets sound out over miles

Elephant Love

Fourteen thousand pounds

Shift silently

Over ruts worn deep

By the lure of water.

A behemoth link

In the tail to trunk chain,

Slinking under night’s cover

Toward the wide, gentle sea.

Each massive foot,

Distinct as a thumbprint,

Hints at treetops and weather,

Speaks of dry and cracked earth.

Using sub-human decibels,

He sounds out over miles,

Summoning kin to the water,

To its cool and its drinking,

To its diving and bathing,

To its feasting and mating.

His way there is slow,

Just five miles in an hour.

Imagine the courage.

One hundred thousand muscles

And nerves all bundled together,

Trumpeting the call

To elephant love.

-Liz Granfort

Like several others featured during this National Poetry Month Poemapalooza, this poem appears in LIFE IS A VERB, with thanks to the poet.

Poets take us to five mile-per-hour love, a ton of love, nerves all bundled together, trumpeting in the forest. Imagine, just imagine, the courage. We all, in our own way, and in our own time, have made our way there to the sea, lured by that water.

Poets help us wish harder

Breathe-in experience,
Breathe-out poetry.
-Muriel Rukeyser

I fervently pledged as a teenager that I would always remember how I felt then, that when I became a parent, I would remember what life was like then, what mattered then, what I worried about and laughed at then,  and what I cried over then. I could not possibly ever forget. I would remember.

But I don’t remember. Not really.

I don’t. As much as I never thought I would lose it, I did. I lost that perspective of life in my teens, having convinced myself that the worries of those years are just trivial child’s play compared to the joys of mortgages, dysfunctional bosses, deciphering cell phone plans, and reducing my carbon footprint. But those worries are not more important, not more meaningful, not more real, not when you are fifteen.

My wish for you, Emma—and for every teenager—is safe passage. Let me carry what I can of your heavy load, and let me know when to let you carry those big boxes yourself. Perhaps in those moments I will simply run a slight distance ahead like a palace courtier just to sweep pebbles and stray tree branches out of your way, or to open a door for you while you struggle to balance the heavy load, something. Some small gesture, not too conspicuous. In rare moments, let’s both put down our heavy cargo and rest for awhile.

Poetry helps us wish harder.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

-Richard Wilbur

[thanks once more to Lee Hancock for sending this poem]

Poets explain history, fear, love, and moats to us

History

It's like this, the king marries
a commoner, and the populace cheers.
She doesn't even know how to curtsy,
but he loves her manners in bed.
Why doesn't the king do what his father did,
the king's mother wonders---
those peasant girls brought in
through that secret entrance, that's how
a kingdom works best. But marriage!
The king's mother won't come out
of her room, and a strange democracy
radiates throughout the land,
which causes widespread dreaming,
a general hopefulness. This is,
of course, how people get hurt,
how history gets its ziggy shape.
The king locks his wife in the tower
because she's begun to ride
her horse far into the woods.
How unqueenly to come back
to the castle like that,
so sweaty and flushed. The only answer
his mother decides, is stricter rules---
no whispering in the corridors,
no gaiety in the fields.
The king announces his wife is very tired
and has decided to lie down,
and issues an edict that all things yours
are once again his.
This is the kind of law
history loves, which contains
its own demise. The villagers conspire
for years, waiting for the right time,
which never arrives. There's only
that one person, not exactly brave,
but too unhappy to be reasonable,
who crosses the moat, scales the wall.

-Stephen Dunn

Damn, poets are smart, the only ones who would think to tell us the history of the world in so many words. Isn't that what history is, a cheering when the royalty marries a commoner, a narrowing of options and increased legislation when widespread dreaming and general hopefulness breaks out. As if legislating behavior will help us abdicate our responsibility for making choices.

And always, always, there's only that one person, not exactly brave, but too unhappy to be reasonable, who crosses the moat, scales the wall. Love is.

Poets tell us what we knew about ourselves but didn't know we knew or rejected as too true. They also, graciously, allow for renewal.

A Purification

At the start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter's accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors.  And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise:
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
and deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

-Wendell Berry

[photo of the beautiful Bradford pear in my front yard, my sign of renewal every spring]

Women walk through the snow barefoot - k d lang

Sorry. I just couldn't resist. This is simply gorgeous.

I wonder. Who would I walk through the snow barefoot for? You? Do they know?

Poets help us love the bump on our nose

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. -Salvatore Quasimodo

Someone who reads 37days wrote last week to ask about my perfect life. How did it become so perfect?

Mr Brilliant rushed into the room to see if I was okay. I was laughing so hard that I choked on my own spit.

My life is perfect only in its embrace and absolute celebration of imperfection. I can't find my keys or my car, I have days and even whole weeks and months of sheer insignificance like you do, my holiday cards for the past two years sit unmailed (don't they Mama?), I've been paying for TiVo for too long to tell you and I still can't figure out how to hook it up, and I'm down to one pair of matching socks, one of which has gone missing. And, oh, so very much more that I cannot say out loud.

And so, when Chris Meissner and her tiny but strong friend Piaf sent this poem to me this morning, I recognized my way through it immediately. Here's to blessed imperfection!

Imperfection

I am falling in love
with my imperfections
The way I never get the sink really clean,
forget to check my oil,
lose my car in parking lots,
miss appointments I have written down,
am just a little late.

I am learning to love
the small bumps on my face
the big bump of my nose,
my hairless scalp,
chipped nail polish,
toes that overlap.
Learning to love
the open-ended mystery
of not knowing why

I am learning to fail
to make lists,
use my time wisely,
read the books I should.

Instead I practice inconsistency,
irrationality, forgetfulness.

Probably I should
hang my clothes neatly in the closet
all the shirts together, then the pants,
send Christmas cards, or better yet
a letter telling of
my perfect family

But I’d rather waste time
listening to the rain,
or lying underneath my cat
learning to purr.

-by Elizabeth Carlson

[image from aphotojourney]