This has been one of those weeks when my phone has been vibrating frequently with people asking if something is up with the stars, when friends have been reporting weariness at best, exhaustion and seemingly insurmountable mood swings at worst, and when I have returned to my cyclical realization of just how difficult the dark days are in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve experienced the drain and moodiness as well, but three distinct events have shown me the importance of maintaining connection during these times.
Whether you believe it’s the Uranus-Pluto square, Sun conjunct Saturn, wintertime blues, or aren’t aware of a collective malaise at all, connection seems to be a vital thread keeping us warm right now.
I’ve thought a lot this week about connection and poetry. I hated poetry for along time, unless I was writing it myself. Then, in grad school, several teachers introduced me to Rainer Maria Rilke and Mary Oliver. My soul gasped and danced and understood. I felt connected.
Poetry connects my spirit, my words and my intellect with my body through evoking emotional resonance. So does music, actually — translating emotion into memory into physical sensation and back again.
Last weekend my lover and I went to a piano concert. It’s been so long since I’ve considered the fluid enchantment of classical piano, let alone listened to it. We sat there, fingers ruminating on keys, knowing the depth of sensitivity needed to articulate the composer’s dream through ivory and pedal, fluid and floating to our ears and our hearts, cascading into ripples of connection.
I closed my eyes and could feel my lover’s gaze on me, memorizing my shape in those moments, drinking me in, imprinting sound and wonder and enchantment and arousal. I opened my eyes to see him beaming at me, surrounded by all of that color and sound, both of us present and breathing deep, with the experience augmented by a tasty little edible intoxicant — the kind that are so blessedly legal here in Washington state. And there it was — connection, emotion, translated through us through music. Bliss.
Monday I taught a class about constructing New Moon rituals. I had no expectations but was so heartened to have 20 people drop in, mostly strangers, all of whom were so incredibly open to learning. We journeyed to the beginnings of creation, to uncover images relevant to our personal experiences. We sniffed black pepper mixed with orange and clove; frankincense, lemon and cinnamon; rose and sandalwood. I read poetry aloud and we talked and shared our uncertainties about faith and our hopes for the future. Strangers finding connection. And at the end — community, connection, smiling faces and open hearts.
Wednesday I attended a death café. The heart of it, a woman 70-something years young going through her second bout of cancer, and again — poetry and connection as each of us told our tales of holding space, of traumatic loss, of confusion and love and faith and lack of such. We talked about the afterlife, of rotting, while sitting in a circle — some of us uncomfortable, some so right at home. The poetry of the unknown, the inconsistencies and mutability of our oh-so-human life, cascading into experience and connection.
I wonder now about the difference between the poetry of longing and trials and traumas and fears versus the poetry of light and love and hope. Connection is inherent in both. Attachment is as well.
I hope we can all stay connected this winter, even if just to some semblance of holding space for our own souls when we’re feeling isolated or alone. And I hope that we can remain willing to move between contrasts and seeming opposites so that we can come through this phase with some kind of presence that allows us to move forward with our arms around each other, rather than separate.
Thank you for this beautiful post, Amanda. I have no time to write more this am – but wanted to share this Mary Oliver poem here – that I found to read to my friend earlier this month, a month after her husband had died – on the mystery of life (and death):
https://www.poeticous.com/mary-oliver/where-does-the-dance-begin-where-does-it-end?locale=en
I want to take your class. I teach other massage therapist how to provide care to people living with cancer. I’m in WA.
Connection played a big part in my life over the past 2 weeks during the Slant Culture Theatre Festival here in Louisville. Many different theatre companies came together, each one putting on a show that displayed to the community what that theatre company is about. The shows were wildly different, but at each one, I felt the deep need to relate mirrored back to me by the actors, playwrights, musicians, and poets on stage. I felt what I often feel in the face of the human story, which is a deep sadness. I get this longing to embrace these beautiful people that are baring their souls, with the warmth I feel in my chest. I want wrap them all up in a loving bear-hug. The pain of the human struggle coming through their art; the hope, joy, rage, humor, all connected.
A lovely post, profoundly appreciated by this old lover of poetry (& of “beaming on” loved ones) & occasional poet.
And thank-you, Lizzy, for the reminder of/link to Mary Oliver’s poem. She’s a wise & wonderful woman whose work speaks clearly to me.