Old age should burn and rave at close of day.

This is Aunt Emily. She is possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Look into her eyes.

No, harder. Do you see it?

It's like she's seen everything that ever there was and so knows everything that ever will be. No one on earth has laughed so much as she, or wept or worried or scowled or smiled or loved or hated or longed or worked or sat in silent reverie. This woman is both entirely full and entirely spent and, wise, at her end, knows dark is right.

The artist's name is Paul Murray. I hope he doesn't mind that I posted his pictures here. If he wants me to, I'll take them down. I just had to share them. I've studied a lot of art history. I understand the work of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock enough to like it more than most people do and the work of Michelangelo and Rodin enough to like it less than most people do. And let me tell you, I don't think I've ever had my breath stolen so fiercely by the work of any artist as I did by Paul Murray's portraits.

His subjects are the mountain dwellers of the Appalachians. They live well past 100, drawing water from streams and trapping food and sewing clothes and making babies and telling stories and looking after each other. They are nearly indistinguishable from the earth under their callused, battered feet. Their hands are gnarled and their fingernails black for their toil. Their children are being drawn out from the land, lured by microwave ovens and Corelle dishes and Big Macs and high-fructose corn syrup. They are nearly extinct. And Paul Murray rages against the dying of this light with his sharpest weapons: pastel and graphite and oil and ink. Godspeed to him.

Don't you just want to hold this little girl and run your fingers through her hair and tell her how beautiful she is? You can't see it in so small an image, but there is so, so much pain and wisdom on Pippi's young face. Will her frail deeds dance in a green bay? I hope so.

This is the definition of precious. Zoe is her name. If anyone will catch and sing the sun in flight, and not grieve it on it's way, she will.

Joseph. His expression stops my heart: a grave man, near death, who sees with blinding sight that blind eyes can blaze like meteors and be gay.

Oh, earthy mountain people, curse, bless us with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.

If you want to see more, go to www.paulmurray.com. Go. See more.

I have mud in my hair, and I am happy.

Today was a good, good day. Today was a gift.

Today, I happened on a pottery shop tucked between two mountains, away from the violent noise and bustle of Hilllbilly Las Vegas. It smelled like garden soil, cool and wet and rich. There were beautiful things everywhere: vats of sumptuous slip, mounds of earth, greenware, and gorgeous finished urns and bowls and cookware and sculpture. I watched an apprentice work for a little while.

And then this kind apprentice offered up a lump of clay and a wheel and tools and let me throw a little pot. Whoa. I mean ... dude. Just wow.

I didn't pay any attention to what I was making, and I don't even remember what it looked like, and I don't care in the slightest. I can't really explain how this makes me feel. It's so much deeper and more complex than that I had fun throwing a little pot, which I did. Working with clay, with the very earth under our feet that sustains our life, caressing it, inhaling its fragrance, opening to it and letting it nurture and cleanse me, building with it, pouring a bit of my soul into it, into the earth—this is when I feel most intimate, most connected with the Great Creative Spirit. It is sacramental for me. If you're an artist, you probably understand what I mean.

Separated from this art form that is so profoundly life giving to me, I wither. I work in metal and I draw, and I love it, but if we have vocations in heaven, I'll be the village potter. Look for a woman with no fingernails and mud in her hair who smells like garden soil; that'll be me. Stop by and I'll make you a mug.

Today, I got to play in the clay. It was a good, good day.

Well, here I am

Today is the first full day of my first family vacation ever. Yesterday, we drove and drove and sat in traffic and drove some more. We arrived at a ridiculously luxurious "cabin" (= a house with log-look siding) that overlooks a wooded valley full of bears and owls (and an occasional centaur or nymph? one can hope). We ate at what I'm sure the locals consider to be a "fancy" restaurant in honor of my sister-in-law's birthday (and I think we all left the table grateful that we'll be cooking for ourselves for the rest of our sojourn here).

I've spend the last four nights in four different beds. I've spent the last week nursing three little boys back to health. It was a boon to my soul, bent as she is on tending to sickness of body and heart, brokenness, loneliness, and hunger. But I am tired. And I've been grappling with insomnia for about a month now, which happens to me sometimes when my heart and mind become overwhelmed. And (tmi alert) until last night I hadn't had sex in ... um ... ten days? (Sorry, but this is just where I am right now.) I hear that parenting will do just this to a person. C'est la vie?

And now, after a bath, some quality time with Kevin, nine hours of uninterrupted sleep, and two cups of Yorkshire Gold with raw honey (which is not currently local but was when we packed it) and organic whole milk, while my father-in-law is cooking me an omelette, and no one is demanding anything of me, and I'm not wearing a bra or any makeup, I think things are looking up. Some things.

Sevierville is hillbilly Las Vegas. It is crowded, neon-lit, noisy, full of consumer culture and tourist traps, miniature golf and drive-thru wedding chapels (no lie!), class-free motels and pancake houses and swimwear shops that give out free hermit crabs with every purchase (!?), and it is kind of vile. But there are quiet and beauty and the aroma of trees living in community where we are staying. And family. Family. It's so—huh. I just don't know what to make of family. I'm not trying to evoke pity here, so please spare me, but I don't have a family of my own. I have a sister, an aunt, two uncles, and a female biological source, but they're really mean to each other (mostly everyone to my mom, even though I love them all and it hurts me, whom they all claim to love, when they are cruel to her, and I so wish they'd stop), but the mom-dad-sister-brother-hanging-out-telling-jokes-being-unconditionally-loved-and-accepted-and-known-and-not-having-to-wear-makeup-or-a-bra experience is altogether alien to me. I don't think I'm very good at it, and I hope they will be patient with me when I inevitably break the unspoken rules of family relating that are certainly in place and of which I am totally unaware. This mother has never kicked either of her children (or anyone else, for that matter) in the ribs, and I'm just not sure what to do with that.

So far, I find the Smoky Mountains to have an eerie, haunted quality, so sublimely beautiful and yet tainted somehow, by a wounded, ill spirit. Maybe the agony and grief of the land and native peoples that the white man has raped for power and profit still imbue the air and water and ground. And the people. Maybe this is just my own slavery to stereotypes and fear, but I find the populace unsettling. Not altogether human. This is confession time, people. I am prejudiced against hillbillies. This is wrong, I know, but I don't know how to change. I don't know how to approach and empathize with, for instance, the people in the town in West Virginia that I heard about on NPR, none of whom have any teeth because all anyone drinks from the time of weaning on is Mountain Dew. I mean, holy crap, what do you do with that? I just don't know. Please pray for me. And the population of Sevierville, Tennessee.

Later I'm going to take a walk, try to find a path down into the woods, with water and my sketchbook and camera, and I'm going to try to get in touch with my soul, ask her how I can care for her now, get her sleeping and eating and opening and breathing again. I'll try to post things here a few times this week. No promises. If you're reading this, thanks. You're an encouragement to me. Love.

Living Life

From a book recommended to me by some friends called Understanding the Enneagram by Donald Riso and Russ Hudson:

"[People like me] will find themselves only by grounding themselves firmly in the realities of the here and now, thus becoming less prey to their shifting moods. They can get beyond self-consiousness by taking the 'leap of faith' that they will actualize themselves if they involve themselves with the real world. Rather than indulge in useless dreams, they must start taking an active, realistic interest in their own lives—as paradoxical and strange as that may seem. However, [people like me] know what it means: they must stop imagining life and start living it."

And so.

It's a tiny baby step of a start. But I suppose it's something. And it was fun! Thanks for your prayers.

Of Agates and Inhibitions

On Thursday, my grandmother's final gift to me arrived in the mail. A saw frame with two dozen blades, 12 drill bits, 32 felt polishing wheels and bobs, six screw mandrels, an anvil, a precut bench pin, a bar of tripoli, a bar of rouge, a tube of beeswax, a carbide burnisher, a ball peen hammer, a chasing hammer, three square feet of sheet copper, six square inches of .925 sheet silver, and 150 feet of .925 silver wire. I went to a local gallery on Saturday and bought agates and opals and assorted jasper beads. My extraordinary husband spent his entire weekend tearing apart and rearranging our laundry room so that I can have a section of it for a workbench. Friends, I am an artist again.

Well, I never actually stopped being an artist. I have no energy but creative energy. Whether I pray a prayer or grill a cheese sandwich, a fertile patch in my soul is always laboring to bring forth something exquisite and noble. I hope this doesn't sound pretentious: when I breathe, I want to exhale beauty. Where I cannot see loveliness and grace, I simply cannot be. I close my eyes and fantasize beauty—subtle colors and jagged textures and clean forest air and weeping and lovemaking and agony and a little girl's laughter—just to get by.

Some friends of mine went on a trip recently. Before they left, I decided to make them a going-away gift: a set of mix cds for the road. I knew it would be fun, but . . . man. The entire process, from compiling and arranging and rearranging and rerearranging the playlists to building and decorating a simple paper case made me happy. Shockingly, ridiculously happy. And happy is not a feeling in which I regularly indulge. Happiness for me is the shooting star that happens by as you lie in a meadow on a warm night with your lover. It's rare, people. I do delight in many great joys in my life, but to be happy, plainly and purely, is quite a treat. And freeing something from the gravid ground of my inner world, especially when I have the courage to share it, even something as mundane as a sandwich or a set of mix cds, makes me so, so happy.

And so here I go, plunging back into a world from which I limped, bloodied and broken, six years ago. I gave up something I love because it hurt less than having something else that I loved ripped screaming from my heart. And it's time to be done with that sad, sorry mess.

I need prayers, friends. I'm scared. I'm digging garbage out of myself and I'm going to try to make treasures from it. It's what I do. But I might fail. So I don't promise anything.

Here's hoping.

A Hoagie in Hoosierville

Sometimes, the planets just align, ya know?

One of my biggest gripes with the state of Indiana is the tragic dearth of good Italian food. Yes, I know that there's an Olive Garden. Yes, I've eaten at Casa in Fort Wayne. But I mean real Italian food, made by squat, hardened old women with leathery brown skin who wear kerchiefs over their hair and wave wooden spoons around in a fury and their thin, balding, jovial, mustachioed husbands. Restaurants that make their own fresh cheeses every morning and smell of herbs and marsala, with red-and-white checked table cloths and sappy violin music. Oh, the pizza. How I yearn for that pizza. Even the sports-bar pizza. Any pizza from east of the Appalachian Mountains.

Well friends, on Thursday night, the planets aligned over Logansport, Indiana.

Kevin and I were driving through Logansport, seeking sustenance. We happened upon a diminutive, white cinderblock building labeled "U-Know Pizza." Well, I thought, it should at least be edible. So we parked.

The "dining room" of the place could have been the waiting room of a mechanic's garage. White linoleum tile, grubby red vinyl chairs, roll paper towels on the tables, a TV in the corner with Entertainment Tonight on it. Now, you may think this sounds rather unpromising, and you may be wondering why we didn't walk out an go find a nice chain restaurant. But any Philly native knows (can I get an amen?) that the best pizza often comes from the seediest of places. So things, at this point, were actually looking up.

The menu was scribbled in a rainbow of streaked ink on a white board. And on the menu were pizza, hot sandwiches, and hoagies. Hoagies. Not subs or grinders. Hoagies. (Could it be?) We approached the counter to place an order, and then I noticed the man making the pizza: skinny, with white hair, a big nose, and brass aviator glasses. Running shoes, baggy khaki pants, a grubby white tee shirt, and a worn Phillies baseball cap. Friends, this man is a dead ringer for my grandfather. No lie.

So we ordered, and we settled into the only table in the "dining room" that was not occupied by people who weren't eating or piles of odds and ends, books in hand, to wait for our food. Not two paragraphs down the page, the man comes out, sits in a chair nearby, and strikes up a conversation with us. And he has an accent. The accent. Guess where this man spent the better part of his life? South Philly! Ahhh!

How refreshing it was to shoot the breeze with someone who can complain about the traffic on 95 and who has a preference between Pat's and Geno's, who understands how neat it is that my sister went to CAPA on Broad Street and has been to the Fells Planetarium and has laughed at the dorks who barrel up the Art Museum stairs, waving their fists around at the top and belting out the Rocky theme.

So we chatted merrily with this man (Mike is his name) for an hour, about the economy and food and life, and I was sad to leave. We ordered an Italian hoagie to go and ate it for supper on Friday. It was the real deal (and so was the pizza, by the way).

This totally random encounter lifted my drooping spirits so much. I miss my city. Life is just so funny sometimes.

Sunflowers to the Rescue

Maybe I can do this blog thing. Because how the heck else would I be able to tell anyone about the sunflowers I saw on the way to work?

First of all, thanks to everyone who's ever shoved me, kicking and wailing, in the direction of learning to ride a bike. Because, had I not been on my bike, I would have completely missed them.

I ride past a smelting plant on my way to work. At least, I think that's what it is. It's hideous and rusty, it pollutes the air, and it employs lots of easily exploitable people. Whatever it is, it's evil. There are train tracks coming and going from the plant, and there are rocks and rubble all along the tracks. And growing among those rocks is a small, healthy community of gorgeous sunflowers. They're orange and yellow and red and brown, thriving and smiling and relishing each other's company, even though they live in the most lifeless, broken, soul-killing of places. I think it's probably because they stick together, looking into each other's faces and feeding each other's brilliance. They probably drink wine and dance and sing together and hug and love and cry together (when no one is looking). And, lo and behold, their simple presence graces all the ugliness around them with life and beauty and whimsy and sunshine. And I think the ugliness around them makes them even more beautiful. Like candles. Or Amélie. Or the red balloon.

And maybe they'll drop seed and spread, and next year there will be more, and then more, and then maybe some day the whole hill will be so overgrown with sunflowers that the smelting plant will be overcome with life and will be forced to shut down and go into business as a nursery, selling and giving sunflowers to all the neighbors. (Is this metaphor too tired and trite? Sorry.)

There might be hope for this dreary little town after all.