Visitors, Please Take Notice

I had a migraine today, so my productivity was paralyzed and my achy brain made sleep impossible. I decided to go for a walk around the little pond by my house. It’s an urban park, with a very well-used 1.5 mile path that I’ve walked and run dozens of times. Something about my damaged head made this walk different though.

About ten minutes into my loop, I looked up at a park sign to see the words “Visitors Please Take Notice,” which topped a list of rules about not drinking alcohol, cleaning up after your dog, and refraining from ice skating. Instead of my usual response to such a list - “Humph! No fun allowed!” - I dwelt instead on the exhortation to take notice. Without really intending to, I opened my eyes. I started to observe what was around me rather than what was happening in my own head - something, as it turns out, that I rarely do.

The first thing I noticed was a tree with initials carved all up its trunk. I’m not generally a fan of the mutilation of nature, but what was neat in this case was that people had clearly climbed all the way to the top of this not-insignificant tree to leave their mark. It spoke of daring, rebellious spirits. It made me wonder if I’d ever walked by this tree before, too engrossed in myself to look up, while AKD or MEM worked quietly away in the branches above.

The people of the pond were fun to notice too. They were all different colors and all different ages. Some wore headphones, others were deep in conversation. I heard multiple accents and languages. There were serious athletes, casual exercisers, and folks who’d come straight from the office. There were lots of adorable dogs that I had to tell myself not to pet, and I ached for a pup of my own.

I felt the air on my skin - unseasonably cool for August, yet quite humid. People weren’t really sure how to dress for such an odd combination. The trees seemed confused, too: sycamores had begun dropping their leaves in droves, and here and there apples and ash had brown and yellow tips. Yet elsewhere summer still held on in deep greens and occasional blooms. Ducks waded in the shallows with heads tucked under wing. Were they sleeping? Or subtly grooming?

Fishermen sat meditative in hidden coves, one with a book folded open beside him on a log. One man had a female companion who sat watching him from a lawn chair, eating Pringles. The only woman I saw fishing was the mother of a family, Spanish speaking, all five of whom had lines in the water. They could have been at it for fun, for dinner, or both.

I almost stepped in horse dung, then goose dung - but most people seemed to be adhering to the edict to clean up after their dogs. I was stopped in my tracks at the halfway point of the loop by the sight of a giant bird silhouetted atop the single tree on a tiny island in the pond. Then I realized there were four of them, all very still, presiding so nobly over the scene that I felt immediately humbled. I think they were cormorants - the “ravens of the sea” - and it was clear that they too were in the business of noticing.

It was around this point - as a wet terrier scurried back to his owner with a big stick in his teeth - that I started to take notice of what was not present at the pond. For one thing, there was virtually no trash. I did see a single discarded Pepsi can and carried it to the nearest bin. And apart from the runners with headphones, there was no technology. When I took out my phone to thumb a few notes on my observances, I felt a pang of guilt. This, it seemed, was a sacred space. I suspect that it wasn’t even entirely intentional, but here, for one brief window of the hectic weekday, my fellow city dwellers had put their devices aside in favor of experiencing the natural world and interacting with live people. A little ounce of my hope in humanity was restored.

The sense that I was living in a micro urban utopia became almost comical when I passed a man sitting on a rock reading what looked like poetry. To top it off, I counted at least three visibly mixed-race couples, which was especially heartening when the country’s unresolved racial tensions were at the forefront of the recent news. Maybe their hand-holding and romantic picnicking shouldn’t have seemed that unique, but I was grateful for it all the same.

As I came to the end of my loop, I took stock: 

One bizarre-looking muscovy duck that reminded me of a cross between a goose and a chicken.  

Two white seagulls on a freshwater holiday.  

Three legitimate fanny packs. 

Only a distant echo of pain left in my head, and a strong conviction that I should go on walks like this more often.

The Next Elegant Step

Usually, all we get is a glimmer. A story we read or someone we briefly met. A curiosity. A meek voice inside, whispering. It's up to us to hammer out the rest.

                                       -Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life?

I’m at a crossroads in life. One of those times when you are stopped in your tracks and find yourself suddenly without direction. The road where you came from is not an option - that much you know for sure. There are plenty of side roads, and it’s possible that they could loop back to where you need to go, but they feel like escapes. Distractions. The trouble is that the road ahead - your only real way forward - has not been constructed yet.  There may be a few trampled weeds hinting at the shadow of a path, but for the most part, you’re on your own. If you want to get where you’re going, you’re going to have to build it from scratch. And that is a paralyzing thought.

I don’t believe we have to be one thing when we grow up, but that doesn’t make being thirty and directionless any easier. I didn’t go to school for medicine, or law, or engineering, which in many ways leaves me a lot of freedom. I’m not locked in - I could be a teacher one day, a food critic the next. I could open a yoga studio or learn the art of sportscasting or sell insurance. It’s not only the commitment that I’m afraid of, though. I’m afraid of wasting time. I’m afraid of choosing poorly. I’m afraid, above all, that I won’t find work that is meaningful, that is me, and that is making the world a better place.

I know I am asking a lot. I’ve always been a perfectionist. But I have this feeling that I’m on the cusp of something. I’m tired of taking the side roads and I want to forage ahead into the unknown. I want to do the thing that is the hardest to do. The trouble is, how do I do it when I don’t know what it is? In Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life?, he observes that of the hundreds of people he interviewed, those who had succeeded in finding a calling often had nothing more than an unquenchable hunger to go on: "The call was muffled and vague at first. That blank urge is the call.” The trick is, you have to let that blank urge take you somewhere. Anywhere. You have to take what a friend of mine recently referred to as the Next Elegant Step.

All the self-help books on this topic - and trust me, I’ve read a lot of them - say the same thing: you need to stop reflecting and start acting. They argue, rather ironically, that it’s time to put down the books, stop taking personality tests and making lists and weighing pros and cons and imagining your ideal life - and time to jump out there and try something. It’s like dating: you’re not going to meet the perfect mate just by listing qualities you’re looking for on multi-colored sticky notes and rearranging them endlessly while holed-up in your apartment. You’ve got to take a leap of faith, swallow a heaping spoonful of vulnerability, and go meet real people in the real touch-taste-see-hear-smell world. Why is that so unbelievably scary?

I don’t know, but it is.

Today I was chatting with an acquaintance after church and happened to let it slip that I'm unhappy in my job, and ultimately, my field. She asked a question that I usually dread: "If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?" This time, I took a deep breath, put aside my embarrassment about lofty, unattainable dreams, and stumbled through an outline of what I like to call my Evil Plan - that glimmer of a maybe-sort-of-ill-formed-idea in the back of my mind. This girl that I barely knew did not even flinch. She listened, asked clarifying questions, and commented that the skills from my current job would really come in handy in the development of this next one. She didn't provide some magical lead, or offer me a million dollars in seed money, or help me understand my own desires any better, but somehow the conversation was part of a rite of passage for me.

Like the plot of a yet-unwritten novel, I have been afraid to spoil the ending by leaking any hint of my Evil Plan to anyone outside of my personal journal. But that has also allowed me to get away with ignoring it - with watching the months float by in silent paralysis. Now I am learning that speaking my dreams aloud - even when they are foggy and silly-seeming - gives them flesh. By letting people in on my secret, I allow them to do two things: I empower them to hold me accountable, and I give them the opportunity to help me. Neither of these is comfortable. They are, in many ways, the hardest thing.

And for me, that is proof enough that I have begun to take my next elegant step.

All Souls' Day

There's something about a warm wind

The air full of leaves

Torn down from the trees, swept up from the ground

Unwilling to settle into rest

They sing like a Shakespearean chorus

Preludes in a minor key

Foretelling fates but leaving the stories themselves

Suspended: waiting to be acted

But also not quite written

And what looks like a gray November morning

Is stirring with the scent of not yet

I Miss You, Mom

Kitty and I were freshman roommates at Middlebury College. Like your family, your freshman roommate is someone you have to live with that you didn’t get to pick. I’m not going to lie - I did start out with some major reservations about our relationship. Between her southern heritage, tight relationship with her mom, different tastes in food and music, different sleep schedule, and quirky Aspergerisms, I didn’t know if we were going to click. Over the course of the year, though, we started to discover an array of things we both loved: Veggie Tales, making fun of French lit, dancing, eating sweets, writing papers to Enya songs, and talking about God and boys. Not many freshman roommates become lifelong friends, but we did.

Eleven years ago today, it was a gorgeous spring day on the Middlebury campus, and I was out on the quad “studying for finals” when Kitty came and fetched me to help her with some errand or other. We then went on a wild goose chase all over campus and town and finally ended up back at our dorm room an hour or so later. When I opened the door, the tiny room was filled to the brim with about 20 of our friends, who yelled “Surprise!,” sang “Happy Birthday,” placed a sombrero on my head, and presented me with a delectable cake. Kitty had been stressed that a million things had gone wrong: people had leaked the surprise, the cake almost didn’t work...when all along I was totally clueless and suspected nothing. I wish Kitty was here to tell the story herself, because she has a way better memory and is a much better storyteller than I am, but the day was emblematic of the selfless, silly, loving friend that she was. We finished off the celebrations with a birthday parade - one of my family’s traditions - that involves blasting “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and marching around with ad-hoc instruments as the birthday honoree leads the way. Let’s just say we got a lot of interesting looks.

That was my 19th birthday, so if you’ve done the math, that means I’m turning 30 today. It’s kinda stressful, and I do feel old and unaccomplished - but more than anything, I feel lucky. It will never ever be fair that Kitty didn’t get to turn 30. We can talk about how much she did and all the ways she touched us in the time we had with her, but she would have kept doing all those things and touching us in even more ways if we had her for a hundred more years. There would be even more embarrassing stories and hilarious photos and languages she picked up and books she wrote. I promise I will do my best to live fully and give thanks for the blessings that I have, but I will always miss you, Mom (we called each other Mom). I look forward to you making me blush the moment we meet again.

The Tree With the Lights In It

Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

While I was home at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving break, I found my old, marked-up copy of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and started re-reading it. In the context of late November’s short, dark days, cold winds, and commercial transformation, I couldn’t help seeing Annie’s concept of “the tree with the lights in it” in a holiday-tinged hue. Everywhere, neighbors and shops and city parks were literally bedecking trees of all shapes and sizes with LEDs and incandescents - sometimes even holding tree-lighting ceremonies. As always, my favorites were those with white lights so tightly-packed and meticulously strung that it was as if the bulbs were a natural part of their anatomy: trees made of needles and sap and tiny seeds of light.

It is clear from Pilgrim Annie’s view that the tree with the lights in it is more than just a tree, however. I know she would shudder at any attempt to directly decode her symbol, but I must know: is it the divine? Her own temperate-climate version of the burning bush? Is it instead the unifying force of nature, an energy normally obscured but in one heaven-rent moment made visible? Or is it just revelation alone - not God, nature, or humanity per se, but just a new sight, granted ephemerally to an open, hungry mind?

In some ways, of course, the tree with the lights in it is all of these things. Painted on the backdrop of the last few weeks, though, the tree has struck me most poignantly as an image of clarity. I’ve been resonating with this other passage of Annie’s from Pilgrim:

A fog that won’t burn away drifts and flows across my field of vision. When you see fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, you don’t see the fog itself, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in dark shreds. So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity.

I am in an all-too-familiar state of having more questions than answers. I feel like I am stumbling blindly through life, contracting a lot of bruises on the way, and crying out for help without much hope of a response. I have been dumped in a foreign land with no map, forced on stage with no script, handed a pile of lumber but no blueprints. I am frustrated.

It is Advent again - the time when for a few short weeks, the rest of the world starts to acknowledge the painful waiting I’ve been experiencing all year. The people of the church come together and groan expectantly, singing the minor-key carols that speak to us through the liminal fog, uttering words of hope to a tune of not-yet-here. We try to prepare the way for the tree with the lights in it. We tear at the blinders on our eyes and pray, palms open and desperate, to receive our daily bread of Truth. Our Answer awaits, if only he would go and get himself born!

I’m not sure what the lesson here should be. I wish I could tell you that I’d had a recent encounter with the Tree of Clarity - that like Annie, I’d been “lifted,” “struck,” “knocked breathless by a powerful glance.” Sorry, friend. No revelations here. I do believe in the tree with the lights in it, though. One of its distant cousins is sitting on the bookshelf in my living room, two feet tall, cut down in New Hampshire, hung with quirky ornaments, and crowned with a gold star cut from shiny wrapping paper. She serves as a reminder that Annie’s tree is out there - that hope does not disappoint.

In many ways, the good news, Emmanuel, will not come on December 25th. Sometimes a bit of clarity only serves to show us the full extent of the darkness we inhabit. When I escaped the city a few weeks ago and camped under the unobstructed sky of Big Sur state park in California, there were so many stars that I couldn’t recognize a single familiar constellation. It was a humbling, breathless beauty that I needed, that healed, that I hungrily swallowed from the spoon of the creator. But it was a question answered by a million other questions, and Christmas, I think, is similar. On that silent night, holy night, we sing because thanks to - or in spite of - our present reality, we believe in the tree with the lights in it. We pray for a glimpse, even for one stolen second, of the world lit up as it was meant to be.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

I grew up in the suburbs. We had just about one acre of property, which was large for our neighborhood. The extra space was for a swimming pool – my mother's condolence for moving to the Midwest and giving up hope of a career in marine biology. She really did bust out her snorkel, fins, and even scuba gear every now and then, though more for the sake of testing the equipment than finding any intriguing flora and fauna on the bottom of our pool. The pool served to divide the back yard into two yards, one of which was fenced in for the dog (later dogs) to run around, and another which was off-limits to the pets and nice for playing volleyball and badminton with guests because it was free of doggy land mines. The whole thing was surrounded by trees, so we had the illusion of being hidden from our neighbors even though they were really just a stone's throw away.

Our house was nothing special – four bedrooms for five people, a living room and dining room that were rarely used, a family room and kitchen where we spent most of our time, and a basement that I affectionately referred to as the “room of doom” due to its wall-to-wall clutter that made any excursion feel like it could be your last. We attended more-than-satisfactory public schools and had access to hundreds of activities from soccer, ballet, tennis and swimming to girl scouts, boy scouts, summer camp, and the culturally-questionable but undeniably fun “Indian Princesses”. We lived in the town with the most churches per capita of any city in America, and the worst crime I can remember happening to us was when the obnoxious neighbor kid managed to steal our stone age car phone (remember those??) by reaching through the rolled-down window. From almost every angle, the suburbs were an ideal place to grow up. But the moment I turned 18, I fled – and since then I have had no desire to go back.

I went to college in a small town in Vermont. On one side were the gently rolling and aptly named Green Mountains, and on the other were the shadowy peaks of the Adirondacks. In between were small and medium-sized farms, winding roads, and a cute New England town that didn't have every store you could ever need, but it did have one devoted to cow paintings and another that sold penny candy, plastic swords, snow shovels, and craft supplies. There were only a handful of churches, but I found one that was just right for me, and though I only went there for three years and have now been away for almost seven, I am still welcomed back as family and given a seat in my old pew whenever I stop in for a visit. You do not have to “escape to nature” when you live in Vermont; nature is the center of life. Occasionally that is a bad thing when it means hurricane rains have washed out the only road to your house or the fields that supply your livelihood, but most of the time it is humbling and awe-inspiring and life-giving. As the words engraved on the front of my college chapel declare, “The strength of the hills is His also.” And it is mine as well.

It would make sense if I left the suburbs and fell in love with the rural countryside and that was that. After all, I have also lived in a tiny farm cottage in western Belize and camped outside for six months along the Appalachian Trail. Everyone knows I am a Nature Bum, or you may even say a Dirty Hippie. But that is not the whole story. Actually, aside from my stint on the Appalachian Trail, I have spent all of the past six years living in major urban centers. Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston – I have developed a soft spot for cities, and should I have the opportunity to leave, I know there are a wide array of things I would miss.

My love for cities, unlike my love for the country, was something that was learned rather than innate. I was drawn to the city for the same reason most people are: the “o” word, opportunity. I was looking for opportunities to dance and be active in the world of dance, and there aren't many of those in rural Vermont. In the process, I ended up seeing and experiencing parts of America that neither the suburbs nor the small towns prepared me for. There was poverty. There was violence. There was racial tension. There was corruption. There was opportunity close at hand, yet many were still denied access to it. And amidst all this were the people – glorious bands of survivors whose capacity to love and celebrate and welcome the stranger in the midst of pain and struggle struck me to the core in a way that can never be unstruck. I will carry the wound, as my one pastor used to say, as long as there is healing left to happen. The hustle and grime and energy of the city – and I'm not talking about the theater district or the waterfront or the art museums here, but the “shady” parts where no one wants to live and no one comes to visit – had taken on a realness to me, an authenticity that the suburbs and the rolling hills seemed to gloss over and deny.

It's not really true of course, but that's how it felt to me. To quit the city would be to run away, escape, take the easy road. I would be far away from the daily reminders of injustice and poverty and racism. I would be too busy hiking and gardening and gallivanting about with people that looked and thought like me to remember the struggles of those who are different, those who do not have the choice to get out. Yet still, the pull is there. Who doesn't want to surround themselves with like-minded people who are easy to live with, in a place that energizes and speaks to their fundamental character? And why should I have to wait till retirement – forty years off in a hypothetical future – to live my ideal life?

Oh yes, I remember! There is one other reason I'm still here besides the soul wound of the city: jobs. I came to the city for dance and have massively neglected the majority of opportunities that are here on that front. But in the meantime, the economy crashed, and the already job-scarce small towns of New England have become entirely barren in terms of employment opportunities. Unless you know the right person, your resume is likely to be met with nothing beyond a sympathetic laugh, especially in the nonprofit sector, my field of choice. Let's say for one imaginary minute though that I did know the right person. A door opened, wide enough for me to glimpse the life that lay beyond and casting a long strip of tantalizing light across my current path. Would I take the bait? Would the city mouse cast off her subway-riding, diverse-dining, apartment-dwelling ways for those of the snow-shoveling, truck-driving, manure-scented country mouse? Would it be worth the sacrifice of being at the center, in the midst of the action, or will I always be a split personality, with one foot on the street and the other in the soil and no interest in what lies between?

The Season of Cinnamon

“We’ll fill our lives with cinnamon now” - The Decemberists

Often it is said that there is a special “something in the air” during the holidays.  Sometimes, if you’re lucky, that something is snow.  Sometimes it’s the scent of peppermint or balsam fir or chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  Occasionally, it’s an unexplained aura of brotherhood and cheer.  More often, it’s haste, stress, curse words, or in the case of a California Walmart this Black Friday, pepper spray.  Sometimes it’s cinnamon.

Today, I had a cup of chai.  There are few pleasures in life greater than a warm mug of chai.  Before I’ve even taken a single frothy sip, its delicate aromas - mixing sweet and spicy, foreign and familiar - have already transported me to a heavenly place...brought me home, so to speak.  The distinct chai spices carry a bite that awakens me to the world and stimulates my senses while at the same time its smooth milk tempers the bite, softens the edges, and envelopes me in a blanket of peace.  No matter how often I take a sip of chai, it never ceases to be special.  I love every piece - the cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves - but perhaps the most universal and accessible of the many flavors in my cup is cinnamon.  

Harvested from the inner layer of bark of a handful of trees from the genus Cinnamomum, cinnamon is literally a prehistoric spice.  It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 B.C. but was surely being used in South and East Asia long before then.  In Sri Lanka, which now produces 90% of the world’s supply, cinnamon is known as kurundu, and in nearby Indonesia, it is called kayu manis, meaning “sweet wood”.  I love that name for it because that’s what cinnamon is: it takes what is normal, plain, functional - and makes it something more.  It is unassuming, brown, and whether rightly so or not, fairly ubiquitous.  And ubiquitously loved.

Who doesn’t like cinnamon?  Unlike ginger or cilantro, cinnamon is not a spice with a cult following.  I don’t usually ask around to see if the dinner guests mind my adding it to the butternut squash.  Like anything, it can be overdone, but that would take a pretty heavy-handed chef.  Cinnamon goes well with both sweet foods - apples, yams, chocolate - and savory or tart foods - squash, curries, wine, cranberries.  It evokes a sense of comfort, “making this cold harbor now home,” as The Decemberists sing.  And for many, cinnamon has seasonal associations.  In the TV show Community’s satire of stop-motion Christmas specials, the characters describe their imaginary holiday story land as having an “atmosphere that is seven percent cinnamon.”  At a time when the world is frosting over, hours of light are short, and warm-blooded creatures retreat to the indoors and underground, we turn to cinnamon for heat and a hint of joy and rebirth.

Beyond its comforting properties, however, cinnamon remains a spice.  It both symbolizes and yields a certain power.  In the Hebrew Bible, Moses was instructed by the Lord to add cinnamon to the sacred oil with which he anointed the ark of the covenant, the Tent of Meeting, and all the accessories of the holy altar.  God commanded him: “Do not make any other oil using the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred” (Exodus 30:32).  This sacred spice has been a symbol of wealth and power for much of its history.  Its demand alone was enough to spur the capture and colonization of Sri Lanka by first the Portuguese and then the Dutch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  As with coffee, chocolate, diamonds and mahogany, the cultivation of cinnamon has cost the poor a great deal of blood and sweat and its profits have not always been theirs to share.

The potency of cinnamon has traditionally extended to romance as well.  In the biblical Song of Songs, the lover says of his beloved, “You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain...with choice fruits...calamus and cinnamon...and all the finest spices.”  She responds, “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad.  Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits” (Song of Songs 4:14-16).  In Proverbs, too, cinnamon is combined with myrrh and aloes to perfume the bed of the temptress.  There is something about this spice that is irresistible - something that awakens what is dormant within us and, to put it bluntly, turns us on.

This magical “sweet wood” can also heal.  Not only is cinnamon oil used as a perfume, an insecticide, and an antibiotic, but a recent study by the Indian Journal of Medical Research found that it was the most effective of 69 plants tested as an antiviral against HIV-1 and HIV-2.  As someone who has spent several years working closely with those affected by HIV, I find this deeply heartening.  As if that weren’t enough, apparently cinnamon also helps combat cancer.  It has led to documented anti-melanoma activity in cell cultures and test mice - progress against the cancer that killed my aunt - and who knew that cinnamon “activates the Nrf2-dependent antioxidant response in human epithelial colon cells,” thereby helping to prevent colon cancer like that which robbed me of my favorite Granny.  The same favorite Granny was starting to go batty and had some memory loss...she was never diagnosed, but if her family members are at risk for Alzheimers, a 2011 study found that CEppt, an extract of cinnamon bark, is a successful inhibitor of that disease in mice.

So why this obsession with the so-called sacred spice? Why “fill our lives with cinnamon now”?  Because there is a draft under the door.  It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and I’ve begun to deck the halls.  All but the most stubborn leaves have fallen, my bike is put away, and I’m about to flip to the calendar’s last page.  In the face of winter’s chill, we seek warmth.  We gather close, rub our hands, bake with abandon, make soup.  An atmosphere of cinnamon is a balm for a broken, frozen, half-dead world.  It is the comfort we need today all tied up with the hope we hold out for tomorrow.  It is both passion and patience.  In almost all of us, it triggers something, no matter what that something is.  So throw a little in your cocoa and meet me by the fireside for a song: ‘tis the season of cinnamon.