Not So Much Unscathed

As remade....

Welcome to the midweek(ish) version of An Irritable Métis. This is where things are usually a little less … irritable. If you forgot what this all is even about, you may remind yourself here. If you want to help me keep the lights on, well….

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I have a memory from my high school choir days that accompanies this Christmas season, though viewed through the fog of all that has happened since I can’t recall if it was ever as a participant (I was in choir for three of my four high school years) or just as witness. Anyway, in the darkness of the room the singers, arrayed on risers and in our black choir robes, would hold candles and sing the first verse of “Silent Night.” Then for the second verse the choir would quietly hum the melody while our director, Mr. Johnston, would say something meaningful over it; I don’t remember his words, I just have the image in my head and how much I enjoyed it. It sounds cheesy now, this description, but it was beautiful in the fashion that solemnity, tradition, and quiet music can be. I like the traditional Christmas songs in the same way I like churches and other holy places. I may not be of the faith, but I enjoy their potential for beauty. I’m only saddened when I reflect on how much of all the typical religious aspects of most faiths fail to be “safe” for anywhere close to everyone.

Ritual and spirituality are important to me, yet I don’t really have any practices beyond meditation. For example, I gave lip service to the arrival and departure of last night’s winter solstice, but I didn’t really do anything for it and I’m bothered by that. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like my spirituality, such as it is, is as yanked in every direction as my attention is by the world at large, and it just makes it all more difficult.

Here are two quotes from Martin Shaw that I copied from somewhere, a podcast maybe:

"All I'm interested in right now is anything that has a great deal of love at its center or some major wisdom. The rest can go to hell.”

and then this one…

"We make things holy by the quality of attention we give them."

They are equally excellent, aren’t they?

I think this reflection on my soul-based failures is largely due to the weird Christmas season I’m experiencing. It’s been less stressful than it has been in years. I enjoy the lights in the neighborhood. I’m grateful that I haven’t been out shopping, or worked as a retail drone to the unreasonable demands of a manic populace out making their problems mine (though I did overhear one such interaction while at a bookstore in Helena the other day and my anxiety spiked … I’m grateful I could observe with curiosity while it subsided and not have to face it day after day). All of this is positive even as it is rather empty. I want to be part of something, I think sometimes, but I really don’t trust anybody, and I hate much of the feeling of coercion that often accompanies any attempts. I’m not looking for answers here, I’m just musing on a season that should be spiritual but largely feels like it isn’t. Nor is anything else. It is a hollowness I reflect on often, magnified this time of year.

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My Friend Ana Maria Spagna

I was a huge fan of Ana Maria Spagna’s writing long before I ever met her, and it was with some nervousness that I cold-call asked her to blurb One-Sentence Journal, which she kindly did. Since then we have read together in public several times and become close friends. I’ve written across from her at coffee shops and in dumpy bars … she might be the only person who could lure me out into the wild to do such again, for that matter, should opportunity arise. Hopefully on her turf somewhere instead of what used to be part of mine.

I mention all this for two reasons. First, she has a great book due out next fall on Torrey House Press called Pushed: Miners, A Merchant, and (Maybe) a Massacre, that I have read and loved. She has a short interview about it you can read HERE. She also has a book of poetry out which I’ve read a couple times and also love called Mile Marker Six. HERE SHE IS talking about poetry too. She’s really wise and smart and wonderful and I’m fortunate to know her.

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Essay in the Guardian

Speaking of memory, here is another fail on my part. I have a piece out in the Guardian this week, which is exciting as anything because I love the Guardian. You may read it HERE if you are so inclined. But the piece opens with reference to the sign pictured below:

What’s weird is I remembered it distinctly as I describe it in the essay. Which is different from what this photo from several years ago depicts, which I found last night after digging across multiple back-up drives, etc. Did I return later and see it as described in the essay after all? Or is my memory just that jacked-up? I suspect the latter, because memories are notoriously unreliable.

Still, I don’t mind. The point from the essay about the sign remains the same, and it isn’t all that different….

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And Finally….

One of the poetry kids gave this to me last week. I’m grateful she fudged the illustration to give me two eyebrows instead of the one I actually have. These kids, I tell you….

Merry everything, friends, whatever and however you celebrate, if at all….