Songs of the Humpback Whale

I recently read a very thought-provoking book titled Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.  It is a story about trauma told in the five voices of five different main characters including four who interweave to tell the story chronologically and one who starts at the conclusion and tells the story in reverse chronological order until she gets to the beginning of the timeline while everyone else's narrative is concluding.

I haven't really digested it all.  Hearing the story from five people's perspective, one in reverse, is fascinating as is the theme of unresolved trauma.  Perhaps all trauma remains at some level unresolved.  Perhaps that's what makes it traumatic- our very lack of ability to digest it completely or to fully understand each other or ourselves in it.  Listening to these five characters struggling to understand themselves and engage with each other exposed them- their vulnerabilities, their hopes, their griefs, their best attempts at living well.

This is a book which I will want to read again.

On Freedom

"Now that we're finally free,
I get why we fought so hard.
The real gift isn't freedom.
It's what we get to do with it.
I don't know about you,
but I never could just sit on a beach anyway."
-Nikita, S4:E6

Daughter, Have I Told You?

Met an author, Rachel Coyne.  Both our sons were playing in the same basketball practices.  I checked out her books and was taken with her poem, Daughter, Have I Told You?

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose words are wildflowers.
Whose stomachs are soft hills 
and whose shoulders are the river's marshy end.

You are of women with feet as heavy as the gray stones of the riverbed,
and hair as thick and tangled as the prairie.

Our arms are the tree trunks
and our faces are the horizon
where wheat will coax the sun to sleep.

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose hands are the harvest.
Whose hearts are the deep, deep lakes
and whose voices are the silver birch of the woodland.

You are of women with tongues long like the river winding out tales as old as the Mississippi.

Our lives are the solid earth beneath you feet
and our embrace. like the paths of the buffalo, circles the heart's land.

Daughter, have I told you?

These women, like your momma and grandmama, 
will stretch up from the earth, dark and strong like trees.

And you, little one,
will sit in our branches
and feel cool wind blow.

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

A dear friend, my walking partner Kifah, gave this to me recently and I wanted to remember it.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. 

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. 

It doesn't interest me how old you are. 
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. 

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. 
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!  I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. 

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. 
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. 
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. 

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. 
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. 

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. 
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.


Enjoy!

How They Croaked

The librarians recently recommended How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous by Bragg and O'Malley.

This page on last words really struck me, especially since we've been studying the Revolutionary War and the forming of America.

Robert E. Lee, one of my personal heroes, is compelling even as he moves on.

George Washington's " 'Tis well."

"The fog is rising."
"It is very beautiful over there."

In offer this as a gift to those left behind.

Poems by Mary Oliver

I've been remembering these poems and wanted to treasure it up for myself.

Wild Geese

"WILD GEESE"
by Mary Oliver

"Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine..."

---

---

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save. 

Mary, Everywoman

Watched this today and was struck by the beauty and by being a woman, especially a mom.

Thanks Tim for forwarding that to me.