that's mrs. mediocrity to you

So I’m reading this book, H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald, which is wonderfully written and interesting and beautiful, but it’s also breaking my heart. On the surface, the book is about a falconer and her exploits in training a goshawk for the first time, but it’s also about her grief after losing her father, and it’s also about the history of falconry, and it’s also about life. And so much of it is resonating with me just now.

Secretly, I’ve always wanted to be a falconer.

This book came to me on the heels of another highly-rated, highly recommended book, one I didn’t finish. I wanted to love The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, (I mean, it even has the word magic in the title!) but about halfway through, when I got to the point where she suggests getting rid of most of your books and putting the rest on a shelf in the closet, I stopped reading. Because, you know, books deserve a place of honor.

Even before that point I’d begun to feel like the book wasn’t for me, her approach is very extreme, and while I am interested in the “less stuff, more tidy” philosophy, I will never be the person who comes home each day and follows a strict routine of putting this there and that here in this order, in this amount of time, in the same exact way every day.

I’m the person who will drop everything on the kitchen table to go write down an idea before I forget. Or the one who wears her coat into the studio to check for email from clients and realizes thirty minutes later that I still have my coat on, or the one who will drop everything to rush outside and watch a hawk circling overhead.

I wish I could be more like Marie Kondo, but I can’t, and I’m old enough to accept this. And so, I stopped reading her book. And that’s not to say I don’t think it has value, she has a lot of good ideas and I may implement some of them, but, to use her own words, it just did not “spark joy” in me. I let her book go, along with my hopes for a tidier life.

I’m messy. I will always be messy. Life will always be messy.

With H is for Hawk, while I am loving the book and falling in love with a bird, I’m letting go of something else. A dream.

I’d never really thought about the details of falconry. Of course I knew there had to be raw meat involved–which would pose a problem for me from the get-go–but what I hadn’t ever really considered was the most basic of facts. Being a falconer means holding a bird captive. I know, it’s silly that I never thought about this aspect, it’s so obvious, but I’d only ever thought of how thrilling it would be to hold a hawk on your arm, to have it fly away and return to that very same spot. How fabulous.

But I could never do the captivity thing. I couldn’t do that to a bird whose very freedom to soar is the thing I most love and admire. I can’t even go to the zoo, because it breaks my heart.

With this realization, I let go of my dream to be a falconer.

More and more often, I find myself letting go. Of books I have no desire to finish, dreams I have no compunction to follow, and things I have no use for. I like to think that means I’m opening up space for other pursuits, and perhaps that’s the truth. I’d also like to think it means I’m getting wiser.

I’ll never stop loving hawks. I’ll also never have a perfectly tidy house. And I’m okay with that.

Someday, if I’m lucky, perhaps I will find a way to hold someone else’s hawk on my arm, just once. But if not, I’m okay with that, too.

I’ll still be who I am, messy and grounded and a little bit dreamy.

I’ll still have words to take me high into the sky.

I’ll still have my own version of wings.

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.So tell me, what are you reading lately?

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the power of lost

possibility

armored over and
bitter coated

speckle-pretty and
color faded

trapped

in time’s musty
closet

or is it hope

redefined

pale protection
roundly painted

and preserved
in smooth treasure box

waiting

for polish and
jeweled key

to crack wide open

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singing

my version

of friends

in

high places

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The things I’ve forgotten, the messes I’ve made,
the dried-up, brittle-boned detritus of survival.

Perhaps I left it out as a reminder.

A forecast. A prediction.

Or a testament to who I really am,
beneath the soil of wasted hour and wanted nutrient.

Root-bound. Buried.

Parched or drowning, depending on the weather.

Somehow, even so, I will bloom.

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the moon kept me awake last night
or perhaps it was the clock-tampering
or the book i couldn’t put down

outside my window
shadows of branch and ice
looked enough like a forest
to quieten my mind

and i wandered
through fields of forced memory
wildflower whispers telling stories
long ago named forgotten

in the silence never silent
i listened to the music of this house
a symphony of survival and
companion

keeping time with tapping toe
and misplaced sigh
tracking half a century of hours
offered and removed

buried warm beneath a quilt
stitched pretty by restless fingers
tracing pattern and loss
joy and forgiveness

worn thin at the edges
by sandpaper hands and
the scrabbling ghost tempo
of tender perennial continuance

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“Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it.
If you can’t find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do.
Persevere.”
~ Lisa Bonchek Adams

Many of you have probably already heard that Lisa passed away last night. Her tweets, like the one above, crossed my path daily for years now, and I always admired her courage, her humor, and her willingness to fight her battle so valiantly and publicly in an effort to raise awareness.

In December, a good friend and member of our family–the same age as I am–was taken very quickly by cancer. I haven’t talked about it much here because her battle was private and not mine to talk about.

But today, I am reminded, yet again, how precious life is.

Just now, I know several other people who are also fighting:
an aunt, a friend’s mother, a friend’s friend.

So today, as I have on many other days, I thank Lisa
for the lessons, the reminders, the beauty.

I send love and hugs to those who fight.

And I remember.

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It’s the shadows that reveal the pattern: dark light white, dark light white. The days roll into a fog of sameness, and I am stuck, wallowing in boredom, or ennui, or something worse: a voice that whispers not good enough.

Habits form and are broken. Wounds heal and become scars. Time is relentless and finite and never sits still.

Chaos is the natural order of things. We fight it, stacking plates and sorting socks, pushing snow and building walls, but it’s always there, lurking around every corner.

I kind of like that.

Except when I don’t, but that’s the nature of life.

I think a lot lately of a book that changed my life once, a very long time ago. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. It’s essentially a book about giving up, accepting, trying less and being more. At least that’s what it was for me.

The joy of sinking into who you are rather than who you want to be.

Walking into the sea of self and washing yourself clean of life’s dust.

Standing naked in today’s mirror and not cringing at your own humanity. Not wishing to be something or someone or someplace other.

I cook dinner and wash the plates. Again and again and again. I tidy the room and sweep the floors and straighten the papers on my desk.

The chaos always returns.

We spend our lives fighting for order in a world that offers anarchy.

And that’s the lesson. That’s the pattern.

Just now, the plates are clean.

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and curtains of words

birds
pecking at windows
in hunger

and i need
sharper claws
stronger tools
dig
deeper

bony fingers
scrabble signal

red-bellied woodpecker
big-beaked bluejay
tiny chickadee

all surviving
huddled together

flutter waiting

still flying

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cats know more about survival
than humans these days

hunt and kill
eat and sleep
play and rest

i fear, some days
we’ve lost our instincts

other days i fear
we’ve only buried them
beneath a thin veneer
of {un}civilized
virtual banter

canter

and we’re riding down a too steep hill
paved with words
we cannot say

art[?] we should never look at
hanging from trees

and strange fruit
dangling from vines
we cannot reach

i don’t know where he goes
when he heads for the woods

or whether his plan is
kill    nap    climb
(circle one and only one)

but some days
i’m envious of his ability

to walk away

except, of course,
for dinner

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Linking in over at dVersePoets today for a bit of joust, the title is a line
from Claudia’s poem. (Sorry Team Brian–I’m such a crazy cat lady!)

planted from a seed wrapped in blood-soaked cloth
on the edge of a forest scarred by arrow

blind-told witness held by treachery
and stars

in the season of growth and green glory

each ring forged of gold
crowned by emerald

each year fed by tear
and ambition

each branch forced to sky
by the sap of lost soldier

broken lock

buried heart

bitter potion

taking root

in the foibles of sand

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