The 'Faraway Nearby'

My long-standing admiration for Ms. Georgia O'Keeffe and her work has been noted here before now. As my study of her life and work has progressed I've felt more and more in her a kindred spirit. Superficially, a glance shows only the differences between us: she painted, I write; she preferred the desert, I prefer wooded areas; she enjoyed a career spanning about six decades, my career is nascent. Beyond that surface treatment, however, I find reassurance in the discovery that we've been in some of the same locations: Wisconsin; Lake George, NY; Williamsburg and Charlottesville, VA; Columbia, SC.

The heart of this kinship, I find, is the trait of an independent spirit. The doctor's assessment of me at two weeks of age applies to her as well: a mind of her own and not afraid to use it.

Looking over some photos from a day-trip during the Independence Day Holiday I see evidence of this kinship blossoming in my own artistic pursuits. Indeed, it appears it may be developing into a pattern. In 2009 I shot "Equine Pelvis With Sky", my take on "Pelvis With Distance." This year I shot my own view from the 'Faraway Nearby.'

I may live in the Big City, but I live a pretty simple life. So, I put on my Simple Shoes*, plopped a hat on my head and headed to Amicalola Falls State Park ** where my husband and I hiked up past the falls on up to the lodge for lunch. Sitting there by a wall of windows I was enchanted by the blue of the Blue Ridge and the carefree flight of several hawks, one of whom I was fortunate to capture in this shot.

Only later did I realize, "That's the 'Faraway Nearby'!" There it was, an interpretation of a mountain view - forested and sans the antlered skull - that evoked that same paradox of vastness and immediacy, elusiveness and intimacy. Those mountains feel they could never be reached, however far I might stretch myself. Then, suddenly I realize I was right there, right there in the midst of them.

I've shared merely the bones of my experience climbing that trail, looking out at the range from above the falls. It will serve, I hope, as an image found in the spirit of independence.

[Photos: Falls at Amicalola Falls State Park, Dawsonville, GA; view from restaurant in lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park; 5 July 2010]

*Seriously, they're literally Simple Shoes

** Amicalola Falls, Cherokee for 'Tumbling Waters,' is the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi. It is located in northern Georgia at the southern end of the Appalachian range. You can enter the Appalachian Trail here.

Notre Dame

[This post is dedicated to Phoebe Prince and her family. Ms. Prince took her life earlier this year after months of cruel harassment and torture from fellow students at the high school she attended in Massachusetts. She and her family had moved to the States from Ireland in 2009.]

For months now I've been haunted by this image. Some days past I realized I had written a poem that could fit with that image to a degree so I have posted it here. The story of how that poem came to be written is an intriguing one.

It was a quiet Saturday morning in September 2004 and I lay suspended between sleeping and waking when I heard a voice, as if in a dream, say, "The wizards are gathering on an uneven plain." I came suddenly awake, wondering what had just happened. Why were wizards being brought to my attention? I'd been reading Harry Potter, sure, but why was I to pay attention to wizards? While I fumbled sleepily with my sweatshirt and slippers I considered alternative meanings for 'wizards.' My husband looked more than a bit puzzled when I stumbled into the kitchen, where he sat surfing the web on the laptop, and asked, "Aren't the bigwigs in the KKK called Grand Wizards or something?"

His response was swift and silent. He turned to me after a search of the internet and before I'd finished making the coffee to tell me he'd found a book, "Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan." What? No way. To my great surprise I discovered that the book did indeed exist and had just been published the previous month. Fully aware that it would take months for the library to get a copy, if it even ordered one, I ordered a copy and by the next weekend had finished reading it. I was stunned.

"Notre Dame vs. The Klan" was written by Notre Dame alumnus Todd Tucker and chronicles a weekend in South Bend, IN which has been at best a footnote in American history. Tucker painstakingly lays out for the reader the history and the aftermath of the incidents and the two primary protagonists, David Curtis Stephenson and Fr. Matthew Walsh. In essence the story is all about D. C. Stephenson's greedy grab for power over the Ku Klux Klan. The University of Notre Dame was, in his mind, an easy and highly visible target in the Klan's drive against "the alien element." Humiliate the Irish, the Catholics, feed that victory to his loyal followers and that would seal his quest.

Stephenson had risen to wealth from poverty. Born in Houston, Texas in 1891 David Curtis Stephenson's early education, like that of Fr. Matthew Walsh, president of Notre Dame in 1924, was in Catholic schools. Like Matthew Walsh he was a promising student. Unlike Matthew Walsh Stephenson's promising mind was belittled by his father, a sharecropper. When D. C. was ten years old his father moved the family to Maysville, Oklahoma, a town without a school and the boy's education was derailed, to his father's delight. In 1907, however, D. C. graduated from the eighth grade of a school built by the town to serve the increased population spurred by the new railroad.

The railroad also brought a farmer with a love of politics, John Cooper, to town. "In 1910, Cooper bought a controlling interest in the town's only newspaper the Maysville News. He gave Arizona Stephenson, D. C. Stephenson's older brother, a job running the typesetting equipment at the paper. Eager to help his brother escape their father and their depressing home outside of town, Arizona talked Cooper into hiring D. C. ...... When he wasn't working, Stephenson relished Cooper's wild political rants and his animated predictions of a Socialist revolution. 'The Socialists stand for the common man, the working man,' he told Stephenson. 'If you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, you're just a sucker for the rich man.' Talking to Cooper, it seemed to Stephenson that the Socialist Party was the place to be for any ambitious young man.'"

At Cooper's behest, the Oklahoma Socialists hired D. C. Stephenson as an organizer for the 1914 gubernatorial campaign. He was smart. He'd worked for a newspaper for years. He had grown up in poverty. He was good looking - a definite asset in drawing a crowd. "Stephenson learned an age-old political truth during that campaign: make people feel like they belong, and they'll go along with whatever you say."

The gubernatorial campaign did not result in success for the Oklahoma Socialists and D. C. drifted around the state from newspaper job to newspaper job and into a marriage, which he abandoned when his wife was pregnant with their child. He fled to Iowa and it was there, as he worked for a printer, that he joined the Army when the United States entered World War I. As an officer, a recruiter, he never left America.

Postwar, D. C. returned to the Midwest and lived on the road in his capacity as salesman of typesetting equipment. He eventually moved to Evansville, Indiana with his second wife - his first wife had tracked him down and filed for divorce in 1917 - a star salesman of newspaper equipment and stock for a local coal brokerage firm. It was in Evansville, in 1920, that the Klan signed him to recruit members, promising him four dollars of every ten dollar membership he delivered. Within six months of his recruitment, "he had sold five thousand memberships, netting twenty thousand dollars at a time when the average American man made twelve hundred dollars in a year. The Ku Klux Klan was making him rich."

He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the spring of 1922, but "the Klan leadership in Atlanta promoted him to King Kleagle of the state." He and his wife Violet moved to Indianapolis. The move accelerated D. C.'s "descent into debauchery." At one point neighbors called in the police during an incident of domestic violence.

With the Indiana Klan in his pocket, Stephenson allied himself with "Hiram Evans, a pudgy, nearsighted Exalted Cyclops from Dallas" with plans to oust the current Imperial Wizard during the Thanksgiving holiday of 1922. He cared little for Evans but even less for the current I. W. "In reward for his loyalty during the coup, Evans gave Stephenson responsibility for twenty-three northern states. He also promised to promote Stephenson to Grand Dragon if his stellar performance continued."

With so much power handed to him it wasn't long before Stephenson decided to act upon his dislike of and dissatisfaction with Evans. He envisioned that under his guidance the Indiana Klan would become the dominant faction and sweep the national organization along with it. Rallies, speeches, and editions of The Fiery Cross proclaimed the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan as the only bulwark against the "alien element," which was always thoroughly demonized.

"While Stephenson's recruiting machine continued to roll smoothly across the Midwest, his personal life was getting out of control. Women threw themselves at him, but he found himself most attracted to those who were not impressed with his money or power. When he was able to draw these women into his life, he was often abusive toward them, attacking them in strange and horrible ways. He would hit them or claw them or, even worse, sometimes bite them savagely all over their bodies. His men became skilled at talking women into walking away without calling the police after Stephenson had assaulted them."

For a little over a year before the fateful altercations in May, 1924, the Klan ratcheted up its inflammatory rhetoric. The Klan estimated that 425,000 Hoosier men were Klansmen, support which ensured that Klan members on the Republican slate of candidates for statewide office were winners in the primary. Stephenson saw his strategy to take over the Indiana state Republican Party bear fruit in the primaries. Soon the state would be run by his people and he would have carte blanche to do as he pleased without consequence other than amassing further riches and power.

Through all of this Fr. Matthew Walsh kept a weather eye on the Klan's activities and pursued a level-headed administration of the University of Notre Dame. Sadly, despite his best efforts he could not prevent the altercations between his students and the Kluxers, some of whom had been deputized by South Bend law enforcement.

In reading about and analyzing Tucker's book I knew that many people could and would find D. C. Stephenson's goals abhorrent, but that did not answer my question about why I was directed to this historical incident. I have no ties either to the University of Notre Dame or to the city of South Bend. I have only known three people who are alumni of the university and I haven't been in touch with any of them for nearly thirty years. Why me?

Slowly I came to realize that I was meant to see this as a writer, as an artist. I was being asked to train that artistic eye which looks beyond mere factual representation to the deeper truth of human experience. What struck me then as a writer was the reality that, although the students of Notre Dame fought valiantly they did not bring down the Klan in Indiana. A woman did.

In March 1925 D. C. Stephenson abducted a woman he'd begun seeing, Madge Oberholtzer. He and his men bundled her, rendered nearly unconscious and therefore harmless by the alcohol they'd forced her to consume, onto a train. During the ride which ended just before crossing the state line into Illinois Stephenson abused and raped her. The next day, deciding she would be better off dead, Ms. Oberholtzer pretended she needed cosmetics and was permitted to go to a drugstore with a bodyguard. She bought and ingested a disinfectant, mercury bichloride, instead. She had poisoned herself, vomiting blood almost immediately.

Madge Oberholtzer was eventually dumped unceremoniously in bed in her parents' home. Broken, destroyed in body and spirit she clung to life for weeks - long enough to give a "detailed, witnessed, signed and notarized statement" to an attorney. Stephenson was arrested on kidnapping charges on April 2, 1925. During the ensuing uproar Stephenson's first wife appeared in town with their daughter, demanding child support. Madge Oberholtzer died at home on April 14 and the charge against Stephenson was changed to second-degree murder.

In the end neither his political connections nor a trial in a venue with strong Klan affiliation helped D. C. Stephenson. His "debauchery" was antithetical to Klansmen and he was convicted of the charge on November 14, 1925. In the aftermath of his conviction the political careers of the governor and secretary of state D. C. Stephenson and the Klan had championed were ruined. "The chairman of the Indiana Republican Party went to prison. a judge in Muncie was impeached. The entire Indianapolis City Council resigned."

As I contemplated a poem based on this story I remembered an incident from 1920 recounted in the second volume of R. F. Foster's biography of William Butler Yeats (p. 181): "On 26 October the news of MacSwiney's death came to Gort. Ten days later Ellen Quinn was shot dead outside her front door in Kiltartan, from a military lorry passing by, a baby in her arms. This horror struck deeply home. The murdered woman was the young wife of Malachi Quinn, one of a well-known Gort farming family, who rented Ballinamantane from the estate; the killing was utterly random. After a huge funeral and angry demonstrations, an official 'inquiry' applied some unconvincing whitewash." Within weeks Michael Collins had orchestrated a response, portrayed in the movie "Michael Collins."

It wasn't much of a stretch of imagination to think it possible that Irish in America in the 1920s were painfully aware of the horrors in their ancestral homeland. Perhaps that pain washed through their consciousness as they watched events unfold in the Midwest? Although firearms were barely a factor in the riots in South Bend I felt I had to find a way to reference Ellen Quinn's death in some manner. Thus, she became the woman in the poem.

Tucker attributes this assessment of the Indiana countryside during a fly-over to D. C. Stephenson: "The impossibly flat Indiana plain unfolded beneath him like one of the battlefield maps he had studied as a child."

It seems to me, however, the message of all of this is simply that this plain is watched over by Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin, the Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven and only a fool would dare to think it flat, even.

[Bibliography:

Tucker, Todd. "Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan." Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004 (pps. 17, 19, 91, 92, 94, 110, 210)

Foster, R. F. "W. B. Yeats: A Life II. The Arch-Poet." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003]

Chicken, a Giant

I have been enjoying the blog postings of an admirably inventive and energetic young man here in Atlanta, and I thought of this post in particular when I spied this chicken in Marietta. Think of the eggs! The 'Big Tow' sign was a happy accident.

Will: "I Am"

There is a line in the movie "Amelie" to the effect that the world is not always kind to dreamers. The worst unkindness the world can visit upon anyone, dreamer or not, is to assert that that someone is not who they say they are. William Shakespeare, a dreamer par excellence whose birth we celebrate today, has been the target of naysayers for centuries now. In tribute to his enduring masterpieces I wish to add my voice to those who assert unequivocally that William Shakespeare and only William Shakespeare wrote as William Shakespeare.

It is something of a cottage industry, this anti-Stratfordianism, and it is centered around several arguments I consider flimsy and pointless at best, arrogant and ignorant at worst.

Their arguments include the proposition that it is 'outrageous' to consider that a glover's son from the shire with no degree from Oxford or Cambridge could have written these plays and poetry. Some point

out as well Will Shakespeare's lack of expertise in fields such as law and music, fields he wrote about throughout his career. Others assert that he portrayed court life so thoroughly that he could not have written the plays because he was not a courtier. Thus, the work must have been written by a noble who chose 'William Shakespeare' as his pseudonym. Still others adhere to the theory that the work was written by several nobles. Some believe the work was written by a woman.

As for myself, while I do have questions about his work I have never questioned his authorship of that work. As regards the question of Will Shakespeare's education, no documents have yet been found to affirm formal education for the Bard. We do know there was a grammar school in operation in Stratford-upon-Avon during his childhood years and I suspect that the curriculum was much more rigorous than we could imagine. An adult with as lively a mind as his must have surely been a precocious child. His father was a town councilman of sorts and so I find it easier to imagine he sent his son to school to discipline his mind than that he did not.

To those who say a woman wrote the plays I say, 'No.' I am a woman. I champion women, but from my continuing study of the Renaissance and the quality of life for women then I do not feel that a woman had a chance in hell of either producing or presenting the body of work attributed to William Shakespeare. Yes, Elizabeth I was a titan, a trailblazer, but it would be hundreds of years before women gained any sort of power in the 'play-acting' business. After all, only this year did a woman receive the Academy Award for Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"). Eighty-two years of Academy Awards preceded her award. We should not forget, also, that during Shakespeare's time the playhouses were considered dens of iniquity and were the constant target of attempted closures.

I consider the other anti-Stratfordian arguments from the point of view of a writer. From what I have read of court life at the time being a courtier sounds as though it was a full-time job in and of itself. Writing is a lot of work. It takes patience. It takes practice. It pops up in your life in a million different ways and almost always when you least expect it. It does not adhere to any sort of schedule whether one is a noble or not. Some nobles did indeed write; Sir Francis Bacon was famous for his essays, but discursive writing is much different than dramatic or poetic writing as most would agree.

While some nobles did indeed write and present some highly stylized dramatic productions I do not believe any one noble or any group of nobles working in concert could have produced the 36 plays attribute to William Shakespeare. That number indicates that he wrote more than one play per year over the course of his career. One of the aims of court life, it seems to me, was to keep the nobles separate, keep them focused on the monarch and their own best interests. How, then, could such a life foster the group dynamic necessary for a cadre of nobles to write thirty-six plays?

The case against the author(-s) being of the nobility becomes even stronger, in my opinion, when one remembers that William Shakespeare was a part owner of the acting company. In his capacity as partial owner and house playwright I feel it is reasonable to consider that William Shakespeare's career was very likely like that of a playwright and artistic director in today's theatre. The acting company was under the auspices of a noble, and as such it was in the company's best interest to make a profit for said noble. Significantly, William Shakespeare's theatre was profitable, and profitable at a time when players were considered vagrants. We must not forget that Shakespeare's theatre was not the only theatre in town, either. He had competition. The profile he would have had to maintain and the work he had to shoulder to ensure that success rules out any chance that some noble, in favor and dancing attendance at court, was the 'real' author. Any noble out of favor with the court would have been insane or suicidal to take such a risk.

The objections raised around the specialized knowledge depicted in the plays (e.g. music and law) are quite weak. We know little enough about his life to assert one way or the other about his knowledge, or lack thereof, regarding such topics. Further, any responsible writer with a modicum of talent and self-respect knows enough to seek out experts when necessary. For someone of Will Shakespeare's standing I suspect it would be quite easy to obtain expert input whenever necessary.

These arguments aside, I maintain that the sheer talent evidenced in this body of work argues plaintively for a sole author. The poetry and plays form an intricate and intimate web of story which tells me that the author lived story, lived his art. He chose the life and he lived it. The writing life was his answer to Juliet's question, "Wherefore art thou?" His art was his way of being himself. He knew the work inside out, upside down, every which way. Writing was not a sometime pastime for him. It was life.

Not all writers have the kind of talent it takes to write original stories, stories like "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Tempest," "King Lear," "Othello," "Much Ado About Nothing," " Hamlet," "The Merchant of Venice," "The Winter's Tale," and the list continues. Here I paraphrase the praise Lewis Mumford lavished upon 20th century painter Georgia O'Keeffe in 1936 when I say that in "conception and execution" not only is William Shakespeare's body of work evidence "of consummate craftsmanship, but it likewise possesses that mysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soul, which distinguishes important communication from the casual reports of the eye" and ear.

There is no question in my mind at all that William Shakespeare was a willing conduit for the creative force which accesses knowledge and tuition beyond that available to our senses. He was a willing, talented, and inspiring conduit. We have evidence that at least one contemporary playwright considered Will Shakespeare a professional threat and felt inspired to jealousy by his work. Jealousy does not spring from watching another fail.

My final argument for Will Shakespeare as the author of Will Shakespeare's plays and poetry is his eminent work, "Hamlet," the 'existential' play, the play about 'being.' This play's the thing wherein he addressed the attacks upon his authorship of the plays, "the slings and arrows" aimed at his "outrageous fortune," his unprecedented success. How better to assert his right to his own work than by couching it in the play wherein he lays bare his grief over the death of his only son, Hamnet?

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appall the free,

Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

"Hamlet," II.ii.586-593, Folger Shakespeare Library ed.

No other man anywhere, ever, can claim Hamnet as his son but William Shakespeare. Nor can any other person anywhere in time lay claim to the poetry and drama of William Shakespeare. This is his primal scream, "I Am!" Any number of men may have wanted to rule the Globe, but only William Shakespeare, the glover's son from Stratford has that distinction.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Who steals my purse steals trash. 'Tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

"Othello," III.iii.182-190, Folger Shakespeare Library ed.

[Photos (all Barbara Butler McCoy): Top: from the Martin Luther King museum, Atlanta, GA; 2009; Middle: a fool pictured on a toy store window, St. Simons Island, GA; 2009; Bottom: banner outside the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.; 2009]

Constancy

Oh, it feels good to be here. Rarely during these past weeks and months have I had the time for my art or for this. There just wasn't time. That has been tough because Art is the means I choose to be myself. Fortunately I have the life and works of Georgia O'Keeffe to serve as wonderful examples of maintaining an artful life whatever the circumstances.

She chose every day to practice art, to live art. It takes a lot of fortitude to outlast such pressures. You really have to want to live it, to practice it, to withstand that. One of my favorite anecdotes from Ms. O'Keeffe's life involves her stint as "supervisor of drawing and penmanship" in 1913. "She was responsible for the art education of hundreds of pupils in Amarillo's half-dozen schools." She was a proponent of the teachings of Arthur Wesley Dow and "fiercely opposed the old-fashioned teaching technique of 'copying,' and she told her pupils not to buy an expensive drawing book ... that had been recommended by the educators. In the spring of 1913, however, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring the use of textbooks chosen by the state commission ... A tense, lengthy struggle between Georgia and the state of Texas ensued - but when the school year ended, the books had not been bought."

Why art? Why does the practice of art make such a difference? See, it is not just art - not 'just' a painting, not 'just' a photograph, not 'just' a sculpture, not 'just' a song, not 'just' a poem. It is art from the heart.

Ms. O'Keeffe saw this so clearly and communicated it with her work entitled "My Heart," stones rendered in pastels. She had a visual reminder before her in New Mexico of constancy amid change, the Pedernal, birthplace of the Navajos' 'Changing Woman.' The heart Ms. O'Keeffe saw, like the Pedernal, is the constant in human life amidst whatever change occurs. The heart is the constant. Years before her pastel rendering of her heart Alfred Stieglitz, her husband, had shown her work with that of other women artists to declare to the world his assertion that "women could reveal a new and uniquely feminine perspective on modern experience." I feel Stieglitz was only partially correct in that assertion.

Rather than revealing a new perspective on modern experience alone, anyone practicing, anyone living, an artful life can reveal through their work a new and unique perspective on Human experience. How? How?

The practice of art is the practice of mindfulness. It is the practice of being here now. It is the practice of connecting to the Everlasting through the heart and channeling the tuition received there to the mind to inform the art. There are no short cuts here - no painting by the numbers, no storytelling by special software, no drawing by textbook copying. The only way to art is through the heart. The beauty of it is, to me, that just as Ms. O'Keeffe's heart could have been part of that Pedernal, her art, anyone's art, offers a perspective on the human experience.

The vision and knowledge of human experience that comes when heart and mind are tuned to the Everlasting in the here and now is vision and knowledge that sees above and beyond, beyond what is available to the senses, beyond the petty contrivances that may clutter our days.

This is brilliantly articulated in a review in The New Yorker of a 1930s show of her work, this portion of which will be my closing note:

Not only is it a piece of consummate craftsmanship, but it

likewise possesses that mysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soul, which distinguishes important communication from the casual reports of the eye ...

[Photos: Top: Weeping cherry, the author, 2010; Middle: detail from pastel by author's son, Dan, 1999; Bottom: detail from scratchboard piece by author's son, Sean, 2002]

[Bibliography: Lisle, Laurie. "Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe." New York: Washington Square Press, 1980, 1986]

Through a Glass Darkly

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

"The Second Coming"

William Butler Yeats, 1920

Passing homes in the darkness of early, early morning or of evening I see windows decorated with lights, beacons of welcome and hope for humanity in a weary world.

The image of people as light in the world has been with me for some time, most especially since my post for "Dia de Los Muertes" (please see previous post). That post, in turn, prompted reflections upon and contemplation of Be-ing one's Self, no strings attached, of gaining and holding that "privilege of a lifetime ... being who you are."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama asserts that "our primary concern is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering" as we meet what Bruno Bettelheim describes as "psychological challenges of gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth and a sense of moral obligation." Bettelheim maintains, and I concur, that such is necessary if we "hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence."

Eastern traditions teach of paths to en-light-enment, to a rising toward pristine awareness. One important element of these teachings is that of examination of the person's mental processes, including their motivations. As previously noted our primary motivation in life is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering and "the chief influence for the foundation of motivations comes from the mind."

An examination of one's own mind to bring one's consciousness further toward en-light-enment is no quick or easy task. "Mental phenomena ... do not evidently have a location in space, nor do they lend themselves to quantitative measurement." How may we study our mental processes as forces of motivation affecting the quality of our Light, our lives? How do we do this, we who are everyday people with relationships and jobs and goals and worries? We are few of us monks or yogis or poets or quantum physicists. How do we do this?

Years ago I was presented with an image of light and life that has guided me through many of life's psychological challenges. Not long ago I realized I had received another image of light and life as a guide in everyday life. I sat in the World Peace Cafe one evening quietly waiting for my sandwich to be delivered to my table while my husband surfed the Web on his iTouch. From our table by the window I looked out into darkness and saw the grouping of over-sized Chinese lanterns hanging in the cafe projected onto the street scene outside the cafe.

I know those lanterns out on the street were illusions, some trick of optics, the light waves (or are they particles?), the properties of the window glass and who knows what else. I have now come to see that scene as a vivid lesson in the way illusion can and does influence us as we walk through our earthly life.

Indians, according to Joseph Campbell, teach that illusion (maya) holds 'A Veiling Power that hides or conceals the "real," the inward essential character of things; so that, as we read in a sacred Sanskrit text: "Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth."'

Someone tries to hide himself down inside himself.

Audioslave

Although the white light of Truth has been veiled from consciousness, our minds must engage in their creative function and evolve phenomena. So our creative function, our Projecting Power, projects "illusionary impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions --- as might happen, for example if at night one should mistake a rope for a snake and experience fright."

Now we come to the beautiful part, the part wherein it is possible to reach the Truth through the obscurity and illusion of these phenomena. For, "when viewed a certain way, the phenomena themselves may reveal what normally they veil ..." This demonstrates the "Revealing Power of maya, which it is the function of art and scripture, ritual and meditation, to make known." For the moment I suggest that we simply take some time for ourselves to contemplate whatever illusions present themselves as guiding forces in our lives.

Our "impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions" have been formed by and large upon falsehood. We owe it to ourselves to look at these things. Many times a change of perspective eliminates the projected illusion and frees us to consider its source -- which is what we need to do. (As an example, when I shot the accompanying photo I could not see the reflection outside from another window, only that nearest the lamp.)

Here I turn, not surprisingly, to William Shakespeare - his "Hamlet" to be precise. The prince has just informed his one-time friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark is a prison. They disagree. They "think not so." Hamlet then informs them that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Think about it.

We can see the Truth of our Selves, just as we can see the light of a candle or a lantern "through a glass darkly."

Love after Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

[A bibliography for this post includes:

Bettelheim, Bruno. "The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales." New York: Vintage, 1989

Osbon, Diane K (ed.). "Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion." New York: Harper Collins, 1991

Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." New York: Washington Square Press, 1992

Varela, Francisco J., Ph.D (ed.). "Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with The Dalai Lama." Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997

Walcott, Derek. "Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984." New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986]

Dia de Los Muertes

"And in the end the Love you take is equal to the Love you make."
The Beatles

Many years ago in the midst of one of my little family's moves I surfaced from a dream in that time between sleeping and waking, asking, "What was that?" As all four of us were sharing the same hotel room I looked around to see if anyone had been roused by my question. Everyone but me was sound asleep, so I snuggled back into the covers and held the dream close.

The dream was a comfort to me. Even as I was excited about moving to Williamsburg, VA, a city I thoroughly enjoyed, I was quite aware that I was moving on from special people and special memories and I was not certain how I felt about that. In the dream I seemed to see the continent of North America as if from orbit. Marking the area of Virginia wherein I lived I saw, well, what I would call a pearl of light, and from that pearl strands of light radiated out to other parts of the country wherein beloved family and friends lived. (I think one strand stretched to Scotland, too.)

"Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night."
"Romeo and Juliet," William Shakespeare, III.ii.24-26

As I contemplated this 'map of light' a voice in the dream said, very kindly, "This is what we see when you move away from the people you love."

In the years since that dream I have developed a picture in my mind in which each earthbound soul holds the light of his or her life as a candle, that tiny flame flickering and braving the weather of our years. We'll wear whatever masks and costumes of our choice as we hold our lives, our souls, and explore the heart-mysteries of who we are here - perhaps we will even manage to carve out a little lantern for ourselves to pierce the darkness.

When we leave this earth, when we walk on into the light, perhaps we set those lanterns on Heaven's floor and the light we have always been pierces that floor, carving out the stars for those still finding their way to the light.

So, on this Dia de Los Muertes (Day of the Dead) let all honor be to those whose lives light ours with Love, who in their mercy pierce the darkness and assault us with Love - most gently and beyond the limits of reason.