Monthly Archives: February 2012

Tornado Warning!: Everyday Magic, Day 509

Posted on February 29, 2012 | Comments Off

It’s after midnight, and my heart is still wide awake, set in racer action by the very sudden tornado warning that propelled our family, dragging or carrying cats and dogs, into the basement at top speed. It started like this:

Caryn (while filling out fafsa form on computer): The dog went back to hiding in the closet although the storm passed. Do you think she knows of another one coming?

Ken (on computer checking weather): There is another one coming.

Caryn: Is it moving fast?

Ken: Let me check. Wow — it’s moving 80 miles per hour.

Caryn: When is it supposed to get here?

Ken: Very soon (refreshes page). GET IN THE BASEMENT RIGHT NOW!

It turned out Ken was watching radar just at the moment the winds started moving like a big tornado about to land right over our house. Clutching my computer against my chest, I dragged the terrified Labaraner out of the closet to join the terrified Labmation already in the basement, and we ran. Once in the storage space way underground, Ken called his mom to get her to move to her basement, then ventured out to rescue Mikayo, the lovey cat, and ran back down with her in his arms. I held the dogs in place, my heart racing. Forest texted people at the speed of light. Daniel yelled, “Don’t go, Dad!” fearing that Ken was risking his life for a kitty. We considered trying to rescue Judy the PTSD cat, but she hides too well in such situations.

So we hunkered down for about ten minutes. Then it was over. No tornado, storm to our east, and the warning canceled. Walking back upstairs, we heard the sirens, just starting to go off, and Daniel was blown away to see the moon already rising beyond the clouds.

Now that the time has slowed, the sky has calmed, and the dogs, men and boys of my house are snoring in various rooms, I land back in that moment when we headed downstairs, the sudden wondering if there’s anything to grab beyond animals and computers and clear warning that there isn’t time; the careful rush down stairs and into the way-back of our basement, the opening of computers to track tornadoes, asking Ken if people we love in this area are okay or if I I should call them. It’s a compressed time when a warning wraps around us, and everything falls away but the need to hold and protect the beings you love, call those in the path, and stay as far underground as possible, not knowing if once again, it’ll be nothing, or eventually, it’ll be something that changes our lives.

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We Got a Dog!: Everyday Magic, Day 508

Posted on February 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

When the Chocolate Labaraner (Weimaraner + Lab) chooses you, who are you to say no? So the day after I finished traveling 39 rings of hell home, I went to the pound with Mariah, our 14-year-old Labmation, for a check-you-out date with the dog who had two weeks ago arrived at our front door. They clicked, and Mariah, who is Ms. Submissive with us, excelled at being the most excellent elder alpha dog. We also had the dog to be formerly known as Dwayne cat-checked, which meant someone paraded him through the cat room to see if he bared his teeth. He didn’t.

My name is Mariah, and I'm happy to have a young male escort

After going through over an hour of pet adoption counseling (seriously! and actually a good thing), we drove the older female Labmation and younger male Labaraner home, debating what to rename him. I was sold on Desi Arnaz, Natalie (by cell phone) wanted Peter, Forest wanted none of these names, Ken wanted Shane, and Daniel and Natalie thought Shane was *insert curseword* stupid. Since it was Ken’s 57th birthday, he got final say, and he suggested Shay, which sounds enough like Dwayne so that the dog formerly known as Dwayne responds to it.

Shay is an energetic guy, and for the first day mostly stood next to one of us, making purring sounds in between eating and drinking everything in sight. The second day, he got sick as a dog, and a visit to the vet confirmed kennel cough, an ear infection, and as we and our mop, plus multiple towels, soon discovered, a horrific stomach virus all. night. long. The benefit of being so pathetic that the cats came out of hiding to stare at him from high shelves, changing their “evil-monster-come-to-kill-us” assessment to “you-call-this-a-dog?”

My name is Shay (thank god, I'm not called Dwayne)

Whatever the cat’s opinion, I call this a dog, and a lively, handsome, smart dog at that. Within a few hours, he walked to the front door and put his mouth on the door knob when he wanted to go out, and after he figured out that obeying “Sit!” got him a treat, he started running to sit before any of us when we were eating. So I think he’s a genius, but most of all — as he sleeps on his dog bed beside me a few feet from where Mariah sleeps on hers — I know he’s our dog. He looks into our eyes as if he’s always known us, which may well be true.

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Posted in family, Health

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“Oy, You’re in Kafka Territory” Air Travel: Everyday Magic, Day 507

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 7 Comments

That’s what Judy wrote me on Facebook. To catch you up, my flight leaving Burlington, Vt. yesterday was delayed a dozen times then cancelled; I spent the night with Kelly at a hotel; then rode in a taxi for 4.5 hours to Boston to catch a flight here. All good, until my Boston flight was delayed enough to ruin my connection. That’s when I stood in line at the Continental desk and told the woman behind me the whole story and also that I was liable to burst into tears at any moment.

“No problem. I’m a therapist for high school students,” she said, which was fitting since I felt like a high school student jilted by my bad boyfriend airline yet again. “You know, these things happen for a reason. Maybe you’re supposed to meet someone,” she added, looking into my eyes. Within ten minutes, I discovered her story: she and her daughter, a high school senior and singer, were checking out the Berklee School of Music. I told them all about my singing daughter and why she chose McNally Smith over Berklee (smaller student body with much more individualized attention, about half the price, and living in St. Paul is WAY cheaper than Boston).

By the time I got to the head of the line, this woman and I were exchanging emails and hugging, and I was filling in the Continental rep on the insurrection in the Burlington airport last night. He was thrilled to hear that the crowd forced the manager back behind the counter to help them.

In the whirl that followed, I exited one terminal, got very lost walking a series of long moving walkways, found my way to another terminal, had an intimate connection with a an American rep who helped me check in, and shared the whole story with a Homeland Security dude who wanted to hear more about Goddard College.

On the way, I told myself there would be coffee and a donut because drastic times call for caffeine and sugar. Then I stopped short in front of a Express-Spa, and switched out my imaginary coffee and donut for a real smoothie, long time resting in a massage chair and 15-minute massage.

Kafka territory? Definitely, but also Fellini territory crossed with Woody Allen and a dash of The Wizard of Oz. All I have to do is believe I’ve always had the power within me, not so much to get home by sheer will, but to open up to the surprises and connections abounding in each corner.

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Posted in Travel

If You Postpone a Flight a Dozen Times & Then Cancel It, the Revolution Begins: Everyday Magic, Day 506

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 4 Comments

To keep someone from using it for harm, Kelly hid the plastic knife on the ticket counter as we were slowly reconfiguring our individualized and extremely complex travel arrangements. It was after 9:30 p.m., most of us had been in the airport for 10 or more hours, and the incremental disappointments had reached a boiling point. “Maybe you better wait over there after you get our luggage,” she warned me, pointing beyond the crowd. “Just in case things get crazy.”

By the time I got the luggage, that warning was well-proven. Several men and women were screaming at the Continental manager, a man named Dan who, very unwisely, tried to leave the airport before most of us were re-booked. Rebooking each of us took an average of 30 minutes with all the voucher production for taxis (like the one paying someone to drive me over four hours tomorrow to Boston to catch a flight, and even more astonishing, a bank of taxis on the road right now to Newark, NJ), hotels, meals, and most of all, new flights, train or bus tickets. If Continental avoided bankruptcy until now, this could be the breaking point.

“How dare you try to leave when your workers have been working themselves to the bone,” someone yelled at Dan. The crowd got ugly in a hurry, and no doubt would have physically prevented Dan from leaving the premises. He threatened to call the police and pleaded that he had been at work for 8 a.m. “We’ve been here most of that time too, our kids are hungry, the restaurants are closed, and you’re not going anywhere,” one woman said as several men tried to climb over the ticket counter. It wasn’t until a man yelled out Dan’s full name, instructing everyone to pull out their cell phones and call the airline that Dan went back to work.

Truth to told, aside from the righteous activity of making the manager go down with his ship, most of the dramatic moments with the 60 or passengers on this plane made me embarrassed to be a human and an American. “You WILL book me and my colleagues to Washington IMMEDIATELY because I have $25,000 I have to spend in Virginia tomorrow!” one man screamed into the face of a young Asian man working hours past his shift, who was so shaken, he started to tear up. Some of the unfortunate Continental workers mentioned quitting on the spot and also that they had a shift beginning at 4 a.m. tomorrow. “People, such a disappointment,” I told the vividly red-haired Leanne, the Continental worker who helped me, before hugging the Asian guy. Trying to reason with the crowd — “Hey, let’s treat these workers better. It’s not their fault” — only inflamed some of the travelers. If we had a bigger plane load of people, there would have been bloodshed.

Luckily, I’m with Kelly, who keeps us laughing and models the attitude of, “Hey, this is what’s happening, so let’s just make the best of it.” We also got to recount all the stories, first to the Nepalese hotel shuttle driver, who kept calling out, “Amazing! I can’t believe it. The manager? It was a revolution!” then acting out our airport adventures for much of the staff on duty at the hotel, and now telling you. I may not have gotten home (yet), but I’ve gotten a hell of a story.

 

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Posted in Travel

Trying to Find a Moment of Calm in Air-Travel-Hell: Everyday Magic, 505

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 3 Comments

Maybe hell is too strong a word, I told myself, but after the last update (“We don’t know if the plane will go out, and if not, there are no flights available until Monday”), hell it is. My student and new friend Kelly and I have been at the airport for over eight hours. First, weather delays, and now a mechanical issue. Everything is up in the air but us.

Sometimes it’s exceedingly hard to find some edge of calm in the center of who-knows-what-will-happen-and-when? “So we might be here until 2 a.m. to see if the plane is good to go?” a woman asks the Continental representation. “Well, surely, we’ll know something before then,” she responds, but the best-case scenario for all of us on this flight who have connections is that we’re going to spend the night in Newark. Not-so-best case is that we’ll be in Vermont for a long, snowy weekend or figuring out crazy quilt arrangements of planes, trains and automobiles.

Meanwhile, I tell myself that I’m healthy, warm, and not so hungry now that I’ve eaten a stale bagel. The airport is pleasant enough, the company is good, and the padded seat is relatively comfortable. So what to do? Not much, but wait, let go of any specific plans, and hope a hotel bed near the Newark airport is in my near future. Most all, I lean my hope toward safely arriving, eventually, back home.

 

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Dwelling in Uncertainty & Snow: Everyday Magic, Day 504

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 2 Comments

The view from my office on the cusp of the incoming storm

The view from my computer of two napping mandalas

When is it most difficult to dwell in uncertainty? When you’re exhausted and ready to be home and then, weather intervenes …..or not. It’s hard to tell what will happen now that a winter storm warning has been issued for the part of Vermont I and the airport are in when the warning extends until Saturday morning. All I know is that the snow is coming. It could be a few inches or well over a foot. It could turn to rain or, worst scenario, freezing rain and ice. The weather is iffy enough that the campus has just announced that the residency is officially over now so if people need to leave early to out-race the storm, they can…..that is, if they drive or have other means of getting from here to there.

Not having my own private plane, I’m here, like many others, and I’m thinking about this state of not-knowing. I looked to solace by re-reading Pema Chodron, my favorite writer on the shaky and unpredictable wiles of the life force:

Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground be-neath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment —over and over again

The view of a campus wondering just how much snow will come

And there’s nothing like the weather outside the window or within our own bodies to bring us back to the present moment and also face-to-face to whatever habitual ruts we dive ourselves into when the going gets tough and keeps the tough from going. “Learning to stay,” as Pema Chodron writes, is about opening ourselves to the wild groundlessness of whatever ground we’re inhabiting which, in my case, is some hilly forests surrounding a small campus, all of it staring up expectantly to the sky for what will come next.

But while life is a series of travels through and dwellings in uncertainty, you could also say it’s a cabaret, especially here at Goddard where, despite the residency being over, a bunch of students are right now down the hall painting their faces, cross-dressing, rehearsing dance numbers and banging on drums in preparation for the unofficial cabaret, which begins in seven minutes. The snow may be coming, the program for tomorrow may be cancelled but the show, at least, must go on.

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Posted in Travel, Weather

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A Museum for the Particularly Curious: Everyday Magic, Day 503

Posted on February 23, 2012 | Comments Off

The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont is a place for the curious, eccentric and more-than-easily amused. So that’s where my students and I went for our field trip today, over hill and dale for 27 miles east until we arrived at the museum, which is like a museum piece itself with its monster-sized red bricks and garlanded stone lions.

Step from one display to another, and you’ll see three-inch long Chinese slippers for women, mummified dog legs, snow flake prints contrasting what happens between -14 degrees and 30 degrees, and miniature Victorian living rooms. There are also birds: many, many, many birds, taxidermized within an inch of their deaths, and gleaming in their display cases that sort them out by continent.

Nothing blows the mind as much, however, as the bug art. We’re talking about 10,592 colorful beetles arranged into stars, a portrait of Lincoln and quilt-like art. Or this design composed of thousands and thousands of butterfly wings. “Where did people find the time to do this?” one of my students asked. But the greatest fun was watching some of our Goddardites look at the art, read the description, and then yell out, “Whoa!” when they realized just what (and who) went into each portrait.

A lot also went into the stuffed animals, some of great size and texture. The bears — polar, grizzly and the like — greet you upon arrival. Besides being greatly imposing and obviously dead. they’re just gigantic talismans of the wild, reminding us of what’s beyond our usual view. Here, you can look closely at the size of claws (huge) and the composition of Indigo Bunting feathers (vivid). There was also a gorgeous gallery featuring photos of lightning over varied landscapes, and a giant globe that, if you touched the controls, you would turn into Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, or the Earth at night, during hurricane system, if and when the water levels rise, and in ancient maps.

By the time we finished padding around upstairs and down, around the corners and down the halls, I felt refreshed by the unusual and unusual juxtapositions. Kind of like what we study, explore and investigate here: like with unlike, and between the fields and traditions, all kinds of sparks that make for greater warmth and light in the world.

 

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Posted in arts, Community, Magic

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In Love With Vermont & Homesick For Kansas: The Folly & Wonder of Being Multi-Placial: Everyday Magic, Day 502

Posted on February 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

It’s no wonder that I’ve had several conversations with students and friends lately about being multi-placial, that is, being someone deeply bonded to two or more places. I’m at home (aka the dorm) in Vermont, sitting at a window at twilight, in love with the height of and light around the pines in the cooling, dimming air. At the same time, I miss Kansas — the way the light tilts differently there, the smell of the air, the sense of home. The folly is that when I’m back in Kansas, I will miss Vermont.

The thing about loving two (or more) different places is that there’s a trace of grief when in either at times. My body especially doesn’t understand why here is here, and there is there, so many hundreds of miles in between. The wild yearning to be in both places at once, to integrate what is separated by ecosystem and hours sitting in airplanes, opens into a sinkhole of sadness at times.

Yet I praise being a living being hard-wired to bond with place. I agree with David Abram’s assessment in The Spell of the Sensuous:

Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.

I think about this quote often because it holds together the places I love in Abram’s call for opening our senses to what is beyond ideas of place: to the visceral and vivid light, scent, rustle and shape of the actual place. Since I started writing this, the gray-blue sky filling the space between and behind these towering trees has turned bright light blue, dimming with each moment. The trees themselves are sharper in their reaching and crossing lines and curves, black-green shadows against the sky.

I also think of something else from David Abram: how he told me once of the obvious linkage between places — the sky. “Go outside and look up. It’s the same sky I’m looking at this moment.” Especially the sky helps me feel some tentative continuation between places — the stars and sun, the clouds and clearings — and that’s enough — just enough — to hold the simultaneous yearnings to love where I am and where I’m not.

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Posted in Bioregionalism, Kansas, Travel

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Two Angles of One of My Favorite Views: Everyday Magic, Day 501

Posted on February 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

Each morning when I’m at Goddard, there’s a moment I savor: coming down the trail, across the road and to the top of the stairs leading to the center of campus. The manor (where we have workshops, meetings and administrative offices) to the left, Kilpatrick dorm in the center,  and the clock house to the right, both peeking out from behind the community building all stand against a background of mountains and sky, distance and height.

I love this view in summer and winter, rain or snow, sun or wind because of the panoramic perspective of my life here and all that surrounds it: the Green Mountains, the sky towering upward, the land unfurling all directions. Goddard, especially when you’re here, feels like the center of the universe, nothing this view does a thing to dispel. But then again, since everywhere is both center and edge, opening wide and tunneling deep, that kind of perspective can tilt the day to come. And the view itself seems to say, “Day, come on through!” So I cross through the view and enter the day.

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Posted in Magic

Living It Up At The Wayside: Everyday Magic, Day 500

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 2 Comments

The Wayside is a diner in central Vermont where meatloaf, seafood pie (seafood + butter + Ritz crackers), maple cream pie and hot rolls rule the roost, so what better place to dine at after a day of meetings about far more heady things (graduate program pedagogy! various epistemologies! and other multi-syllable words). Besides, any place regularly given five stars out of five for beef hash or chicken pie has to be good for you.

I talked my friend and boss Ruth into going with me, which worked out particularly well since she had a car, I didn’t, and it would have taken me 12 hours to walk there. At our booth, I filled up on all manner of high-fat, super-tasty, sumptuous and simple foods, and we caught up on our lives too.

I have had many great meals and even better company at the Wayside over the years: an international group of women who couldn’t stop laughing about anything mildly funny because we were so exhausted, over a dozen women at the college for a writing group facilitation training, a poet-carpenter who I talked with about Blake over mashed potatoes, and little escapes from residencies at the college to have some breakfast for dinner on a little date with just myself and a good book. This is possible because the Wayside is the kind of place you can go to with a beloved, a galloping group of friends or people who will soon be friend, or by yourself, any configuration easy as pie there.

By the way, the pie is great although I was too full from seafood stew, V-8, hot rolls, onion rings and apple sauce to make it to dessert. By I’ll surely return this week, probably when I need to vanish myself from big groups of people and 16-hour workdays to read a magazine and eat something that takes me back to my own diner-imprinted childhood.

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