Sunday, October 30, 2005

Trick or Treat

This is the time of year when the veil between the living and the spirit world is at its most thin. The time when the spirits of the dead - both benevolent and malicious - come out to play. This is the transition time between the goddess of summer and the god of winter. Our clocks are changing, our rhythms are upset.

This is a time of change, of movement between the worlds. Who are we to think we are safe from it? Who am I to think that once again I'm immune from the spirits prowling the earth? I am battling with my demons these days. Battling against sadness, battling against the grief of lost relationships, battling against fatigue.

On Halloween night, tradition has it that we dress up in scary costumes. In Celtic times, this was to frighten off the ghouls so our souls would not be possessed. People wander around the neighborhoods, loudly scaring off the spirits, so they can wake up the next morning purged and free from eternal darkness for another year.

Jack, an Irish legend has it, was a drunken scoundrel who one day tricked Satan into climbing up a tree. He made a deal with the devil, promising to let him down from the tree if he never again lured Jack into temptation. Jack, when he died, was admitted to neither heaven nor hell, but was given a single burning ember to light his way through the cold darkness of eternity. He put it in a hollowed-out turnip to keep it burning longer.

I love to trick the devil and think I've won. I love to think I can work around the clock, put things off until the last minute, cheat the process. And, for a time, perhaps it works... but eventually I'm left, literally "burning the candle" - wandering through a nighttime of exhaustion, unable to rest, unable to settle down.

We have other ways of tricking the devil. The custom of trick or treating came from offerings proferred to the evil spirits, placating them so that they would not inhabit our homes and our hearts. Fires were built on tops of hills so the spirits would not lose their way. Households would burn a fire that would stay continuously lit until spring returned.

The Celtic society was one of strict order and structure. In order to stay psychologically sane, they allowed this period between October 31 and November 2 to be one of chaos and unrule. Like Mardi Gras, there is a time and place to let down the hair, break down the barriers, forget the daily constraints. It's healthy. It's necessary.

So let's get out our scariest masks and say boo to the demons that wander the world at this time of the year. Let's rattle our swords and make lots of noise. Let's also play trick or treat with our demons. Let's nurture and feed them, give them lovely treats and placate them into submission. Let's make friends with them in the hopes that they will soften and leave us alone. Let's build ourselves an internal fire to keep the light inside us burning bright.

It's time to change into a period of introspection and darkness. Let's greet these upcoming months with the knowledge that we will find gaiety within the nights, and celebrate the light that will once again return.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 4:53 PM 0 comments

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Train Platform: Postcard on the Edge of 13

My oldest son and I have decided to take a train up to Old Town for dinner. To celebrate his 13th birthday tomorrow.

We are waiting on the platform. It is one of those end-of-summer nights. Joyously warm, the way that only warm can feel when it has the faintest flavor of fall in the air. The slightest hint of bright chilly days to come.

My son just got new glasses. I just got new lenses. There is a crescent moon in the sky, a sky is so clear that you can see the entire moon easily. The crispness of the moon is something neither of us have seen in a long time. It is achingly perfect, obscenely beautiful.

A star, or satellite, or planet hovers above it.

Spencer goes to the end of the platform to make the train come faster. I have given him this task and he performs it seriously. He tells me he sings rap songs while he's standing there.

Me, I see a young man, poised, looking down the railroad tracks towards his future. Above him and to the right is the moon and star. The lights shine down on the empty landings and the tracks bending away into the darkness. The lighting is cinematic. The composition is Edward Hopper. The air is saturated with promise.

My son is standing there. And like so many other things these days, I suddenly time travel through all the phases of my time with him: the deep nights of infancy, his first time on a swing. His essence. How I've known him for many lifetimes, and yet am always surprised and delighted by him. His difference from my other son, who delights and amazes me completely as well, in radically different ways.

I hold us there on that platform. Praying with deep certainty that this moment of perfect equinimity will sustain us through the uncertain years ahead.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:44 PM 0 comments

Post-partum Postcards

It's true. It's just like having a baby. Giving birth to this book was -- I'm now fond of saying -- like having fifty sets of triplets. And when someone smilingly asks when the next one is coming out I smilingly want to very nicely and appreciatively knock their block off.

It's not that there are feedings at night or anything like that. But it requires so much outpouring of time and energy. I am now a walking persona of myself, selling that persona out of the trunk of my car, thinking about sales and profit margins during my waking moments rather than, well, writing about those waking moments.

My blogs have not been happening.

Sorry 'bout that.

I have a lot of images. Fragmented pieces of wonder. It has all be most incredibly good. I'm meeting such wonderful people. I'm selling books. I won an award!!! It's all beyond way cool. And life goes on.

So here are some postcards from the edge. Not fully formed, but thoughts that need and want to be shared.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:36 PM 0 comments

Starshine: Postcard from Santa Barbara

Friday night, two weeks ago:

Driving north on the 101, on that magical stretch of road where the cliffs rise up huge and proud on your right and the beaches and ocean stretch out with infinite promise on your left. The road slips through it like a ribbon of grace.

I see a shooting star cascading down in the sky ahead of me. It takes my breath away.

It has been years since I've seen a shooting star, maybe since my dad died. At that time, every time I saw one I'd think it was him winking at me from the great beyond.

I think that again, and immediately am covered with waves of tingling chills. I am here en route to the Santa Barbara Book and Author's Festival to showcase the book. I am here after finishing a huge endeavor. Some of the time, most of it, I have felt alone, on the frontier. Suddenly I feel the embrace of my father reaching out with pride from beyond the grave.

As the chills cascade up and down my legs and back, I decide to capture the thought, hold it out and examine it a bit. This seems to be what I've been doing recently: taking apart this thing called "love" in my life, bolt by bolt, examining each little spring and armature, cleaning it up, meditating on how the engine works . . . and doesn't work.

I find myself thinking that the word "love" itself is problematic. We use it to describe everything from how we feel about popcorn and movies, to acts of sexual congress, to how we feel about our latest haircut (hopefully), to the thing that is what the world needs now.

I think: I can't understand this thing "love" while using the word "love." It's as overworked and misunderstood as that other word: "God." (Which makes the sentence "God is love" both impossible to understand and completely intuitive, in the same measure, at the same time.) For this love thing, I decide I'm going to start breaking down its components and work with it that way for awhile. Instead of calling the sun "sun," I'm going to understand it in terms of light and heat and sustenance, and track its behavior by sunrises and sunsets.

In order to understand these pieces I need to know what it feels like to envelope someone in this thing, and how it feels to be enveloped. I know without thinking what it feels like to envelope someone else. I have my kids to teach me that. That feeling is one of absolute delight in their existence, and a refusal to accept their non-existence with a belief so strong it quivers with intensity. It is a feeling of pride, protection, surprise and delight at their individuality. It is a feeling of being constantly being blessed by their presence in my life.

Then I switch over. How does it feel to be the receiver on the other end of these feelings?

I draw a total blank. I get confused. My heart starts doing a shuffle, rocking back and forth with vague thoughts and hopeful suggestions. I start extrapolating: well, if it feels like THIS with the kids, then I must be feeling THIS from someone else. Yeeeeahhhh, my heart says doubtfully, straining to try to play the new game. I remember that time when I felt that someone really was loving me in a way that that kind of felt like that.

Even though that receiving part is rusty and (maybe) broken, it's obvious what love should feel like. Even though I haven't seen the stone or really believe in its existance, I can see the ripples on the pond and acknowledge they are real. So the job is to examine the ripples and then, with a leap of faith, understand that the cause for them is tangible in both space and time.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:05 PM 0 comments