Patricia Wild

“Things Fall Apart”*

[Ohio River derelict boatyard, Louisville KY]

Yesterday, gorgeous, sunny, and warm, my two and a-half-year-old grand-daughter and I strolled the neighborhood, stopping at a small park, once a vacant lot, the next street over. (Full disclosure: I was one of the many neighbors who maintained that open space until the city assumed responsibility for its landscaping and maintenance.) She and I quickly dis-covered that over the winter, countless dog owners had let their pets loose to do their business in the snow; melting snow revealed layers and layers and piles and piles of dog shit. An unbelievable quantity. Trust me.

After my initial outrage, after wondering if I could enlist the abutting neighbors to help patrol or take pictures of the miscreants (owners not dogs), after considering calling the head of Parks and Open Space and loudly demand he lock the park entrance—(until what, Patricia? Those horrible dog owners agree to clean up their dogs’ mess? C’mon!); in other words after lots of indignant, First Word Problem stewing, I realized I had a spiritual challenge—literally—in my own back yard.

Here’s how far I’ve gotten (and it’s not very far): Although we are neighbors, I don’t live in the same neighborhood as those dog owners. We see ourselves and how we interact with this neighborhood in profoundly different ways. And although all of us live now, right now, those dog owners and I have a major difference about time. About the relationship between the here and now (and the expedient) and, yes, what comes next. Like spring. When the snow will melt. And how present action has consequences! Always. And, finally, what does it mean that I live in a neighborhood with people who don’t believe their actions have consequences? Whose centre is themselves?

Like I said: not very far.

*”Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” is a line from “The Second Coming” by Yeats

“I believe she’s amazing!”*

[Science Center bike rack; Harvard University]

Sunday morning, on my usual route to my Quaker meeting for a 9:00 meeting, my path crossed with a woman in her late forties, her lipstick carefully applied—I love that even with losing an hour’s sleep/Daylight Saving Time she took time for some personal care—about to enter Harvard’s Science Center. (Usually at that time of day, Asian, college-aged students head towards the entrance.)

Now, maybe that woman is an employee in the Center—but on that glorious, warm, and sunny International Women’s Day, I chose to believe she’s what’s awkwardly known as a “non-traditional student,” i.e. older! I chose to believe that wherever’s she’s from, she is a leader, she’s well-known, respected. I believe she had been chosen to come to Harvard to rub shoulders with other amazing people before returning to wherever she’s from to do more amazing things! (Okay, so maybe the sunshine and warmth had a little something to do with my conviction?)

But, oh, my brothers and sisters, I need to believe this.

* Here’s the link to my personal favorite flash mob: “I believe she’s amazing.” Enjoy!

Asterisked (It’s complicated)

Saturday I went to a rally in Boston in support of Cape Wind*, a proposed wind farm that would lie off the coast of Cape Cod and is, once again, threatened. For fourteen years, this sustainable-energy project has been fought by a) the fossil fuel industry** b) wealthy, Cape Cod home-owners concerned about aesthetics*** c) Bird lovers **** d) the Cape and Nantucket Sound islands’ Wampanoag tribe. ***** Twenty-six lawsuits! Not to mention that an offshore wind farm has never before been built in this country ****** so that, although several top politicians, including President Obama******* and former Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, have been in favor of the project, the actual implementation process, even without repeated, obstructive lawsuits, has been complicated by its steep learning curve. And, finally, some say Cape Wind was a lousy deal from the get-go. That took the wind out of my sails! (Temporarily)

Know something, though? If there will be more pro-Cape Wind rallies, I’ll show up. Even though I have deep concerns about its shaky business practices. Because, know what? Sometimes, even when you do know all about those pesky, complicated/complicating asterisks, sometimes you have to just show up in support of a very simple and uncomplicated and non-asterisked idea. Like Peace. Like Justice. Like Truth. Like, in this case, supporting renewable energy. Sometimes you just have to show up.

* My late father, a Republican and a long-time, loyal employee of the General Electric Company, the world’s biggest nuclear equipment supplier, was nevertheless a huge supporter of Cape Wind. (He was also a sailor and a thrifty Yankee who, no doubt, saw the value of harnessing free, just-going-to-waste wind power.) So I went in his honor, too.

** Especially one of the Koch brothers, who also happens to own several homes on the Cape.

*** Like the late Teddy Kennedy

**** Yet Mass Audubon has endorsed the project.

***** Who claim they need an unobstructed view of Nantucket Sound to welcome the morning sun. Yet their land on Martha’s Vineyard does not face Nantucket Sound. So while, in principle, I am in sympathy with this Native American tribe, whose name, indeed, means greeting the morning sun, that I also know they’re trying to open a casino I find confusing!

****** Meanwhile, while all the Cape Wind dithering goes on, another wind farm off the coast of nearby Rhode Island has recently been approved!

******* The same week as Boston’s Cape Wind rally, President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL Pipeline, definitely NOT a renewable energy project, and so made climate change history by saying “No! Keep fossil fuel in the ground. Unburned.”

Climate change

[A Greyhound lost in a snowstorm; February, 2015]

Yesterday afternoon I took the #77 bus from Arlington center to Harvard Square, sitting on one of the front seats reserved for the elderly (I qualify.) Seated so close to the young, pretty driver, I got to watch her negotiate Massachusetts Avenue traffic and curb-side snowbanks that might impede her passengers’ getting on and getting off. I’d give her work performance an unqualified A+.

I also got to watch her interactions; how she welcomed passengers as if the bus were her own living room, how polite she was, how solicitous, how she created a climate of respect and kindness in that grubby, enclosed, metal, moving space. I noticed how, over and over, people responded to her warmth with surprise at first and then with gratitude, and how almost everyone getting off thanked her! After thanking her, myself, I exited reluctantly, not at all eager to rejoin the jostling, distracted and self-absorbed crowds.

The day before I had been at Suffolk County Superior Courthouse to support a friend—but wasn’t clear what time his case had been scheduled or which courtroom. But when I stepped inside a courtroom to see two older women—clerical/administrative workers I’m guessing by their clothing—in an otherwise empty courtroom, I sensed my search, in a multi-story building filled with tanned, briefcase-wielding lawyers and those caught up or lost in our nightmarish criminal justice system, had ended. Surely these women will help me, I thought. Sure enough, they stopped what they were doing to consult a computer which, once I’d supplied the right keywords, revealed where I was supposed to be and when.

And, yes, I thanked them, too.

“Love’s austere and lonely offices”

[Lilacs under snow; February, 2015]

Today is Ash Wednesday. The Lenten season, forty lengthening days, begins. Today is a day to contemplate this precious “Pale Blue Dot” and where Mother Earth has been and where she is headed on her yearly journey around the Sun. Today is a day to consider Light.

Today I contemplate my fellow travelers on our Pale Blue Dot journey, we who live on this particular patch of the Northern Hemisphere, we of, basically, the same longitude and latitude—and the same distance and at the same tilt from the Sun. My fellow travelers and I await those lengthening days with keen anticipation.

As I contemplate my (increasingly exhausted and often cranky) Red Sox Nation compatriots, I remind myself: we don’t live in a war zone. We don’t live in Syria where 3.7 million of us (!), are now homeless. We don’t live in lawless and betrayed-by-its-own government northern Nigeria; we are not daily terrorized by Boko Haram.

No. I can say with certainty that my neighbors and I have heat and electricity and running water. Our supermarket receives daily deliveries—although trucks squeezing in and out of its snowbound parking lot tie up traffic for blocks.

And yet, despite how relatively benign this regional hardship is, small, communal, civic/civil acts touch me as though we truly were collectively under attack. Like when people shovel a path to a fire hydrant. Or when an exhausted, cranky stranger nevertheless steps to one side to let me pass as we both negotiate a narrow, snowbanked path. (And when I next encounter a stranger approaching another narrow path it’s my turn to step aside.)

Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

It Will Always BE This Way

[Backyard signpost, Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 2014]

“Are you all right?” out-of-town friends and family anxiously ask as my tiny part of the world shivers and shudders under the weight of seventy-two inches of snow!

Yes. We have heat and light and plenty of shovels and a tenant who’s shouldered more than his share of the digging-out. We can walk to a supermarket half a block a way; the post office and the bank and the library and our Quaker meeting are conveniently near by. We’re fine. So far.

Here’s what is unsettling: that the extra time it now takes to get dressed to go outside, and the need, several times a day, to dig out/shovel, and the slow, laborious slogging through canyons of snow and mincing cautiously over ice, and canceled meetings because there’s no place for anyone to park, and being told more storms are expected in the next couple of days; it feels as if, from now on, my life will always be this way. This harsh and dramatic reality is reality! In perpetuity.

One huge reason? Much as I try, much as I know that the days will get longer and that spring will come, I cannot imagine the snow melting. There’s so, so much of it! And that profound lack of imagination brings with it a peace as deep and as silent as the snow.

That seventh bee sting

[Side-yard path formerly used as a shortcut until the homeowners erected that fence]

Last night in the moonlight I shoveled a path from my kitchen door to a birdfeeder hanging from a wrought-iron hook attached to our deck railing. And then, beneath the quiet magic of an almost full moon, Jupiter beside it, I filled the feeder with the best birdseed Target sells so, first thing this morning, my neighborhood’s sparrows and juncoes and house finches and cardinals and blue jays and, yes, pesky squirrels (when I’m not keeping watch), could have breakfast.

After the first blizzard dumped two feet of snow, I’d waded through my backyard’s drifts and climbed up the snow-covered steps to the deck and shoveled the first, such path. But after our second storm and another foot or so, the snow was just too deep to wade through, again. Opening the kitchen door with all that new snow drifted against it? It would only open an inch or so. So I gave up.

Yesterday had been a hard day; I’m going to respect the privacy of a family member and just leave it at that. And just getting around, going about my usual, day-to-day life in a densely populated community under more than three feet of snow? Very challenging, very tiring. (Thank God the Patriots won or folks would be even more cranky!)

So, worn out and blue, I’d opted to lie on the couch under a thick quilt and read.

But then, something pulled me off the couch and into a kitchen drawer to find, yes! A metal, broad-bladed spatula, i.e. a tiny shovel. “I can dig a bit at a time until I can get the door to open wide enough to get a shovel out there,” I reasoned. And I did, scooping the “shoveled” snow into a bowl and dumping it into the sink.

There’s a theory concerning poverty that says that being poor, being oppressed, is like being stung multiple times by bees. A stung person can handle the first two or three stings, can treat the pain, but when the numbers climb—let’s say that sixth bee sting—he or she just gives up. Endures. Tries to ignore painful reality.

And some say that this is true—but not a universal phenomenon. One article I read discussed empowerment as a variable, for example.

First acknowledging that in a very deep way I will never know what it means to be poor and oppressed, I wish to simply acknowledge the power of moonlight. And grace. (Which is all to say, mystery, right?) I do not completely understand what compelled me to do something I, exhausted and depressed, had given up on but am so very, very grateful I could.

So are all the sparrows and juncoes and . . .

“Everybody has a backstory.”

[Union Square Farmers’ Market; my farmers’ market]

Last week I attended an open mic featuring young writers from the Books of Hope* program at Mystic Housing Project’s learning center—a daycare center/classroom/activity room/arts and crafts studio located in the housing project’s multi-purpose building. And witnessed an amazing moment:

Like most open mics, the readers, who have been working with the program’s facilitators on poetry and personal reflections re Black Lives Matter, signed up to read their work. As the sign-up sheet clipboard was passed around the center, these public-housing youths ate pizza, socialized, listened and observed an equally talented, young DJ do his thing while they worked on a piece of writing inspired by a Black Lives Matter declaration. And then, in the order they’d signed up, these talented young people, most in their teens or early twenties, read aloud. And were amazing!

One of the last to be called up was one of the youngest poets. Let’s call her Angela. Angie is maybe eight, ten, twelve and had never before participated in an open mic. So one of the learning center staff—I’m afraid I didn’t catch his name—volunteered to be her opening act. (Apparently he’d promised her he’d be “silly.” But proved to be a non-silly, gifted storyteller) The DJ played “2001: A Space Odyssey”‘s opening theme, everyone “gave it up” for Angie, and a young, terrified girl clutching a much-handled piece of notebook paper walked to the front of the room and stood behind the microphone.

She couldn’t speak. Not even when flanked by her opening act and Heather, another learning center staff member. So then, everyone in the audience was invited to come to the front of the room; we all did, maybe fifteen, twenty of us. And then Angie, in tears, began to read—accompanied by Heather: “The police . . .”

Was she terrified because she’d never performed before? Or did the word “police” and what she wanted to say about them trigger her terror? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that just about everyone standing beside her did know. That community of young people, whose lives almost never overlap mine, brought their deeper understanding of Angie’s backstory, whatever it is, to their simple act of kindness.

* Books of Hope is a youth literacy empowerment program inspiring the next generation of young authors and performers from Somerville, MA and the Greater Boston area.

What do you see?

This past rainy, rainy Sunday, I had the great joy to visit the Brooklyn Museum in the company of three daughters, three sons-in-law, three grandchildren and one husband. Keeping that large a crowd, two under the age of six, together, engaged and not touching the art–sometimes the adults were as bad as the kids—was a challenge but (mostly) we did fine.

This was my second visit to the museum; I was eager to again experience two features of the museum: that it attracts a diverse crowd (sadly, most of my museum experiences in Boston have been pretty much Whites Only) and, oh, yes, Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party,” pictured above. (Immediately after taking that picture I was gently scolded for using a flash. Oops.)

My Brooklyn-based daughter now takes school-aged kids through the museum every week so at some stops along the way, she would ask family members open-ended questions to further help us to appreciate what we were seeing.

So, inspired by her There Are NO Right or Wrong Answers probing, here are a couple of questions about the above photograph:

What do you notice about the plates?

Why do you suppose, of all thirty-nine places at this dinner party, the photographer chose to feature Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe?

Why do you suppose the artists who made the embroidered runners chose those particular colors for those particular women?

Who do you see in the background? Why do you think that woman is carrying that child?

Strangers in Strange Lands

[MCU Park, Coney island; home of the Brooklyn Cyclones*]

You know how, sometimes, you can spot a face in the crowd and suddenly, that one stranger is the only person you see? And how, because the expression on his or her face is so revealing, so nakedly truth-telling, you feel as though you have a reasonably good chance of knowing what’s going on with that person? Me, too.

Two days after the attack at the satirical magazine, “Charlie Hebdo,” office in Paris when twelve people were murdered, on a bitterly cold night in Davis Square; that’s when I spotted him. Maybe Ethiopian, maybe Eritrean, maybe Muslim, his distress, frustration, anger were palpable. He wore a blue, embroidered ski hat, the kind that hangs over your ears and could be tied under your chin—only nobody does—and a suitably warm jacket. “Well, at least he’s dressed for this horrible cold,” I thought. At least.

Okay, maybe he’d just had a fight with his girlfriend. Maybe his boss had given him a hard time. Maybe his distress centered on the cold. Why wouldn’t it? But I tend to think that he, a stranger in a strange land, was feeling his alienation—as in being an outsider, a dark face in a sea of white—with every cell of his being. And that his loneness infuriated him.

To catch the briefest glimpse of that man’s lonely, painful fury (if, in fact, that’s what I saw) was, for me to contemplate the Kouachi brothers, who’d murdered 12 cartoonists two days before, and the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not condoning murder. And I am not saying that every immigrant is a potential murderer. Absolutely NOT! I am merely saying at for a fleeting moment on a cold winter’s night I may have spotted the same pain and alienation that has generated so much pain.

* That man in the white cap and T shirt stood for the entire game although repeatedly asked and begged to sit down.

This Old House

Years ago, before I moved to (then) working-class Somerville, I lived in an historic district in central Connecticut; most of my neighbors lived in lovely, expensively-preserved, eighteenth century homes. I did not. But even though I did not own an old home I somehow absorbed enough knowledge of Old School architecture to be able to spot historic houses in my new, gritty, densely-populated neighborhood.

Back in the day, I could also easily spot whenever one of my Somerville neighbors did any kind of home improvement. It was easy! Just as carefully as my historic-district neighbors worked very hard and spent lots of money so as to not reveal that anything about their historic house had been changed and that every colonial detail had been carefully preserved, my new neighbors made darned sure everyone knew when a window or porch had been replaced by not making the slightest attempt to match style or color or materials. “I’m brand-new!” these home improvements seemed to shout.

Nowadays, Somerville is upscale—which means, among other things, that plenty of people with deep pockets have bought homes in the ‘ville and, you guessed it, have spent oodles of $$ to restore their homes to look like what they’d looked like when they were new. (In most cases, the 1860’s) And, yeah, It seems I’ve retained an authentic and historically accurate sensibility from my Connecticut days because, I admit it, I admire what these folks have done.

But: there’s an old, old house around the corner from me, probably built about 1825, that is currently being renovated and, I’m guessing by the sloppy workmanship—leaving windows open or broken for weeks, propping sheets of plywood against holes in the walls, for example—is owned by people with not much money and who’ve spent no time at all researching that house’s history. (I could be totally wrong about this, of course.) And those homeowners will, I’m guessing, put in fancy new windows and doors, paint it in a color never seen in the 1825, make it into the home they want, a home that reflects their 2014 taste. (Or, perhaps, what they imagine will sell in the current super-hot real estate market in this neighborhood right now.) So who cares what it looked like when it was new?

But maybe that history—American history—never did and never will mean much to these homeowners. Besides, history does not equal holy. Let’s not forget that when that house was built, for example, slavery was the status quo. Indeed, a block away from that house is “Bleachery Court,” now a park and skating rink, but in 1825, that land was covered with a factory that bleached, yes, cotton. (The North has plenty of slavery-related history, of course.)

So, yes, I’m sad that an historic house has been gutted and its charming roofline radically altered and its story, to to speak, silenced. I’m sad that a daily reminder of the people who lived in my neighborhood so many years ago has been destroyed. I think reflecting on that past every time I walked by that house made my own life a little richer. I also know how expensive preservation is. And that holding on to the past simply because it’s the past is nuts.

So I’m hoping that, like a pay phone turned into an art installation, something just as delightful as that historic house will take its place.

(But I’m not counting on it.)

Bit by Bit

[Sign in a plumbing-supply store with a Christmas tree and presents in its front window]

Before Christmas, my husband, grand-daughter and I traded germs ( our two-year-old grand-daughter generously shares an unlimited supply of colds and other ailments from daycare with us) which, filled with Christmas Spirit, I fended off. But those germs finally won—and so I spent yesterday under a thick quilt with Olive Kitteridge. (And Kleenex and cough drops and tall glasses of orange juice.)

This morning, still pretty low-energy, still pretty sick, as I waited for my coffee water to boil I found myself wiping down our utterly filthy kitchen stove. “Ahh, ” I thought, watching myself clean up some of the past week’s spillage we’ve been too busy to attend to, “here’s a tiny bit of my Real Life breaking through my exhaustion,” like the hyacinths and paperwhites in my living room just beginning to reveal themselves. (The bulbs were gifts from a dear friend and a dear daughter.)

Low energy, pretty sick, it’s remarkably easy to think about the past week and to only remember how exhausting Christmas is! All that work! All that family drama! All those delicious holiday treats that left me worn out and debilitated once the sugar-buzz wore off! All that surrounding, worldly tension between Hopeful, Light-Filled, Peace-Loving, Joyful versus Cynical, Violent, Bah Humbug.

How comforting (Get it?) to remember as I lie under that thick quilt that Hope and Light and Peace and Joy are within me—within all of us—no matter what the season or how we feel. Indeed, like those mysterious and unprepossessing bulbs, these gifts of the Spirit require only something to cling to and a little water:

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvelous error!

That a spring was breaking out in my heart.

I said: Along which secret aqueduct,

Oh water, are you coming to me,

Water of a new life

That I have never drunk?

[from “Times Alone” by Antonio Machado]