Friday Dispatch: From Sky to Sky
With Terry, Mary, Yoko & George
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.
Of course, at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
~ Mary Oliver
Friday greetings,
This short Mary Oliver prose poem recalled for me how Terry Tempest Williams opened her late mother's journals only to discover they were entirely blank.
In recalling this, something in me softened and released. Instead of feeling pressure to fill the blank page, I find that I understand the blankness in the same intuitive way that I understand the sky, in the same way that when I'm breathing, all I want to do is breathe, lie down in the snow staring up at that big emptiness, my chest a mirror, my heart perhaps a planet or a moon orbiting a planet, cells circulating like fiery microscopic stars, my whole body humming, pages blank, mind blank. Aaaaaaah. Here is the freedom of not having to understand something in order to experience it fully.
Page, sky, breath – these just are. Beyond words, beyond explanation, beyond comprehension even. Their is-ness reaches my soul and delivers me into presence.
This week, over bowls of carrot ginger soup, a Jewish writer friend shared these words from Yoko Ono: “The first fifty years were a prelude to my life.”
The sentiment made perfect sense to me, but as soon as I put the words on paper I began to doubt them. Do the first 50 years count less? Of course not. But do the countless moments of half a century prepare a person to live with more breath and more sky?
Suddenly, a man’s voice: "More bone!"
Lore has it that this is something George Balanchine commanded of one of his prima ballerinas while tapping the dancer’s protruding sternum. This makes me wince. I want to square off with him, right there in his studio. I muster up my rusty Russian and speak: Nyet! Not more bone! You have this all wrong.
Give me more sky! More expanse, more width, more girth, more body, more expression, more blank pages, more breath, more love, more enoughness, more gentleness, more being. Take up more room! Spread out, arms like branches, everything in me reaching for this revelation, this yearning: More being!
I’m not talking about a vacation. I’m talking about a life. I’m talking about the world, either too loud or too silent. I’m talking about how I grow tired of gauging which is which.
I return to Mary. Let the world be. I stand with the trees on Tu b’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees. I long to follow their lead, here sentry, unwavering, here witnessing, watching, here circulating, receiving, here nourishing and providing what I can, steadily and generously, without fanfare or fame.
May I, too, learn to live peacefully in the cold and the silence, in the changing seasons, in the vast network of roots and crowns.
May I, too, open beneath the shelter of a blank white sky. No beginning, no end, and no middle. From sapling to ancient, from ashes to dust, from winter to spring to summer to fall to winter again, from sky to sky.
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena
p.s. I have openings next week for 1:1 coaching sessions with a $50 discount! We can talk about writing, life, and everything between, including where you’re stuck, what you’re dreaming of, how to proceed, and/or any existential questions keeping you up at night. We can go deep and/or wide in an hour. Whether you come with something specific to discuss or simply an intention to explore, I can’t wait to see you.
These words. Of theirs and yours. Like a crisp cool breath of winter air invigorating your lungs.