No Safe Distance

Everything Old is New Again

When I was a very young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I had a recurring nightmare every time we had a thunderstorm. Last night it dawned on me for the first time who the multi-armed image was that would chase me, surrounded by flames.

It was none other than Kali.

Score one: Jung.

And it's funny because even though it was definitely a nightmare there was something...familar enough?...about it that kept me from being terrified or waking my parents to get me through it. Kali was definitely trying to catch me, presumably to destroy me, and I knew she was going to annihilate me if she caught me but part of me was fascinated by her so I almost liked it when she showed up.

That may not be exactly the right way to say it but I don't have better words for it. It was like we had a special relationship...like hero and arch villian maybe...I needed her chasing me in some weird way...like it tested me in a way I wanted to be tested...or maybe not so much wanted to be as had to be tested.

Now that is some pretty sophisticated stuff for a second grader so you have my permission to have your doubts. I'm just trying to describe for you what was all non-verbal stuff for me. There was never dialogue in these dreams...just this blue multi-armed-being chasing me surrounded by flame and just before she caught me thunder seemed to inevitably wake me up...a big clap. Or maybe it was the blinding flash of lightening that preceded the thunder and coincided with the flash of light so bright as Kali was just about to reach me that woke me. At any rate, I woke up with an adrenaline rush and because the dream was recurring (and maybe because I always escaped) I kind of started to look for her. I remember being disappointed when over time I started to be woken by thunder and realized that the dream didn't accompany the storm.

What does that have to do with me now, forty years later?

I think everything.

My arch nemesis is and always has been my discriminating, over active, hyper critical mind. That's Kali...the destroyer. I get that from my mother and I don't like it any better in her, believe me. And because I have a healthy dose of that which I resent in my mother (and she got it from hers), the ability to always find the flaw, or that one little thing that would make things better, and the compulsion to point it out, I find myself in the terribly demoralizing place of realizing that I still have "mother issues".

Score one: Freud.

The good news is that Kali is intent on destroying what I already know is my biggest problem, (every human's biggest problem): my own ego. Pick a belief system and you will find it's the only work to do really, Buddha knew it, Christ knew it...all the saints in every tradition. We and our desires and our attempts to spend our lives building temples to ourselves are the fundamental problem. ("Witness my beautiful body, beautiful mind, beautiful personality, beautiful clothes, beautiful financial success, beautiful accomplishments...don't you wish you had them too?" we say to each other in one form or another. Don't agree? What do you think all those self-help authors are doing? And if we weren't buying into the game they wouldn't so often be best sellers. Or we say to ourselves, "When I have a beautiful body, mind, personality, bank account...then I'll really be something and I'll attract the right mate, job, award, adoration..." so we buckle down with our eye on the prize.)

And there is Kali ripping it down and eating it for lunch as soon as we think we are close to being somebody. "Oh yeah? Well, you and I both know you are a big faker...you can run but you can't hide this (and she rips off your offending arm and shakes your own finger at some fatal flaw or other)...now who do you think you are?!"

It's not a lot of fun, having someone dogging you who knows all your shit.

It's not much fun having someone who always seems to confirm that you are, in fact, a big imposter.

But there is that other part...the birthing part...Kali being female and all.  And there is that part of you deep down inside that knows that all that shit is just shit and you are really the pony underneath it all. And ponies grow into horses. Who doesn't love horses? My father-in-law had a name for horses. He called them "Eat and Shit" because that was pretty much what they did.

So do you reject the pony? It's just being a pony.

Are you going to reject yourself just because you are never going to reach perfection?

That's what I've been holding on to for far too long. I'm always the kid in the back seat riding home from my grandmother's house with my mother turning around with that deep breath before she starts, "Well, Laura, let me tell you what Grandma said. She thinks you are wearing too much make up...she thought you were a little mouthy...that shirt is too tight...that's a wrong color for you..." Every time I write an email or a blog post I know not a single typo will escape my mother's notice. Not one.

I'm not blaming my mother. She probably said a lot of nice things that I don't remember. For whatever reason I internalized the critical mother. And while my mother is an earthly symbol for this it isn't really about her. I internalized Kali's discriminating destroying aspect and that's why she doesn't appear to me in thunderstorms anymore. I can't see her because she's with me all the time. It's not a special event anymore. We live together now.

And in the end, Kali, not my mother, holds the keys to my salvation. Fire can annhilate or it can purify. It all depends on how attached I am to preserving who I think I'm supposed to be.

It's a paradox. As long as I am attached to perfection I'll never reach it...as long as I notice every typo and hear my mother's voice pointing it out I'll reactivate all the negativity associated with that. If I spend my life trying to reach my internalized view of my mother's internalized view of perfection I'm doomed. I'll never make it. I already know that. I'm trying to win approval from my own belief about someone else's view of me.

Goofy, right?

Score one: Ellis

As long as I feel like I have failed as a person because I have felt anger when I would rather feel compassion...judgement when I have longed to feel understanding...every time I fail to give myself compassion for being a human Kali is going to singe me. And she's going to keep on burning until I drop whatever it is I am holding on to.

No wonder I missed her.

And the fact that Kali started chasing me around when I was seven years old is a good thing in my opinion. I got on this path a long time ago, or maybe the path chose me, I have not idea how it works...but here we are after all these years and that helps me know that there is no falling off the path. I may sit for a while. I may step in a pothole and twist my ankle. I may envy people on horseback who seem like they are zipping by me. I may long for a jet plane. But in the end that doesn't matter. There isn't any race. Every road can take me exactly where I want to go. It's all the same road.

Miller Beach Arts District to Host 2nd Pop Up Night Oct 29th

"Pop-Up Art 2011" - Once again, Miller Beach Arts & Creative District transforms Lake Street storefronts into an exceptional evening of art and entertainment.

 

Miller Beach - Gary, Indiana - For several months local artists, musicians and "creative types" from this bohemian lakefront community have been working together with area restaurateurs and business owners, to redevelop their sleepy downtown into a dynamic destination for arts and entertainment. Their endeavors have produced The Miller Beach Arts & Creative District, which is hosting its second "Pop-Up Art" event October 29th between 6:00 and 9:00 pm in Downtown Miller Beach.

 

The District's first "Pop-Up" night in September was a huge success, displaying the work of several prominent local artists and attracting scores of art lovers to an enjoyable evening in Downtown Miller. This month's event aims to be even bigger.   Nine venues along Lake Street will showcase the work of local photographers, painters and sculptors. Visitors will also enjoy theatrical and dance performances along with live music and refreshments. As part of the event, The National Lakeshore's Douglas Center for Environmental Education will display the artwork of 16 area high school students along with pieces done by their teachers. In addition to the student/teacher exhibits at the Douglas Center, the work of over twenty local artists will be on display in several venues up and down Lake Street. The South Shore Centre for the Arts will host a two-person theatrical performance along with dance renditions by the South Shore Dance Alliance. Lake Street Gallery, a long time anchor of the arts in Miller, will also be hosting an opening and reception for their featured artist, Jean Bargeron of Ogden Dunes. "Pop Up Night" is an amazing opportunity for art enthusiasts to forge connections with local artists and experience firsthand the creativity and energy happening in the Miller Beach community.

 

 The Miller Beach Arts & Creative District is transforming downtown Miller and the adjacent residential areas into a diverse and vibrant cultural destination for the visual, performing and culinary arts. Arts districts have been used in various cities nationwide as a catalyst for community regeneration and future plans for the new district in Miller Beach include an assortment of art galleries, live/work spaces for artists, boutiques, and dance studios, mixed together with restaurants, retail options and venues for live entertainment.

 

For more information about the Miller Beach Arts & Creative District or "Pop Up Night" visit www.millerbeacharts.org.

PRESS CONTACT Eric Reaves ericereaves@aol.com

Beautiful Canvases at Beautiful Prices: I'm Having a Sale!

If you haven't checked out my photography yet, today would be a good day to head over to check out my work because I am having my first sale and it is a rocking cool one. Canvas prints, both gallery wrapped (1 1/2" wrap, black edged, ready to hang) and teak framed large prints like the one you see me holding here, are marked 30-40% off. You can see them in this gallery.

You can also read more about my work by visiting my sister blog, Laura Young Photography.

Have fun! And thanks for helping spread the word...

Coincidence? Wishful thinking? Or Something Much More?

Nick's comment to my last post prompts this one...I'll just tell you what happened and you can draw your own conclusions. It's the kind of thing that happens a lot in my life. A lot.

On the first anniversary of Michael's death, I was at my father's house, just as I had been on the very day he died. At his wake, Father Frank surmised that Michael may well have died at 3:00 in the afternoon, as they say Christ had done on Good Friday.  He may well have been correct in that.

And while Michael was the first to protest that he was not to be compared to Christ, there were many around him that were deeply touched by the way he did try to live his life in a Christ-like fashion. He was the best embodiment of spiritual values I have seen a human achieve.

This was not an accident. He was also the most spiritually disciplined people I have ever known. He had wanted to join a monastery at one point but was rejected due to his quadriplegia. The brothers said they simply lacked the means to provide the level of physical care he would need. So, he was a monk on his own. His bedroom was very much a monk's cell, extremely small and sparse. Even months later it still smelled like a church. He had a saying in a small frame, "Live in your cell as though in paradise."

He did.

And I can tell you from the many Lenten Fridays that I sat beside him, (the only Masses I went to in the course of the year), listening to the Stations of the Cross and knowing what I did about his injury and his life as a quadriplegic in a world not always kind to the disabled, there were quite a few parallels that gave me an even deeper understanding of why Christ was such a model for him and indeed, his Savior.

I had never expected to sit in a church again in my life after I dropped religion off in college. I never felt the need. But being with someone who truly sought to embody his spirituality, who really, deeply, contemplated the saints, not as mythic and magical figures but as men and women in the world commited to a certain path even in the midst of great suffering...He breathed life into them in a way no one else had ever done for me.

I still don't go to Church (with the exception of Lenten services, which I may also tell you about sometime). I don't watch EWTN like he did. I'm not very good at prayer. But an awareness of the dimension of life has not left me. Sometimes, as Michael said he himself would do, I do find myself spontaneously saying the Prayer of St. Francis when I know I'm needing a little "course correction." Good stuff in that prayer. It might be good if more people made a habit of saying it.

So, back to the anniversary...

It was coming right up to 3:00 in the afternoon on the anniversary of Michael's death and I was sitting by the river just thinking. Michael grew up on a river, fishing all summer and skating all winter just as I had done. It was part of the bond between us.

And as I was thinking I saw from the corner of my eye a huge cormorant swim by very close to the deck I was on. I have never seen a cormorant in the lagoon in the 45 years I have known it.

A cormorant. A fishing bird.

Be ye fishers of men...how many times did Michael talk about the disciples just being simple fishermen?

And as 3:00 hit, the cormorant climbed up on the fallen cottonwood tree immediately in front of me and held its wings out as though to dry them.

It made a perfect cross.

And it held that cross for a long time.

A very, very long time.

My Sweet Embraceable You...

Okay, I've been given a green light by my friends that I just have to be me, even if that means straying from whatever fantasy I might have about normal and hey, with a blog name like "No Safe Distance" who was I trying to kid, anyway?

I've been gone for a while, that's true. I'm coming back though.

Did you miss me, babies?

I missed you.

Oh what a lot I have to tell you. Some here, some elsewhere, some now, some for later, some probably for much later, some publicly, some for maybe just one other person that I haven't even met yet over absinthe as I lie on my death bed because I'm going to go out all hip and dramatic like that.

So, where to start, where to start...

I know, how about my photos? 

I've been really having a fun time seeing my photos escape my computer and get into frames and on canvases. You can see a bunch of them here. And I've found some great marriages between my photos and ways to use them for causes I believe in like revitalizing my hometown.

But as I was busy making nice with my camera, taking it for all those long walks I promised it would have some day, I discovered a...well, let's call it a 'quirky little niche'.

I get enthralled by dead things. 

And I guess I have to consider that may always have been the case. I do remember having a lot of funerals for fish along the lagoon I grew up on. You can't grow up in a natural area and not have a lot of life and death around you.

I still remember my very first funeral, my great grandmother. I think I was in second grade. She was buried in a Greek Orthodox church so it was all chanting and heavy incense and big crusty bread and wine for communion, not those anorexic wafers the Catholics serve. I was too young for communion, of course, but I remember the basket of those big hunks of honest bread. It was all so full of mystery and I found it comforting.

Fast forward to me in Catholic school with my prayer book and rosary and a whole bunch of hymns in my head from weekly Mass and I pretty much had what I needed to be a Funeral Director for whatever animal I might find in need of my services in the dunes or along the shores of the lagoon.

And then a lot of things happened in my life and a lot of people I loved died and then there I was with my camera walking along a mostly deserted Lake Michigan beach.

 

And there were dead butterflies everywhere. And coho salmon. Even a squirrel once. And seagulls. And some other things that I don't even know what they had been.

And they were beautiful to me.

I mean really beautiful.

 

It was like being in a mini sculpture park.

And so I started taking photos.

 

 

And you know how I am when I'm taking photos. I practically crawl into my subject.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that is what found me one fine morning, in a ratty tank top and 25 (30?) year old camo pants with my hair tangled up in a scrunchy, lens to snout with a dead salmon. (Photo not taken of me that day, but you get the idea. Feast your eyes on the awesomeness. I know. Right?)

 

 

And here is the salmon:

 

Oh, can we please have a closer look? Pleeeease????

Why, yes, kittens, you can. Mama loves you...

 And that is when I realized there were a few people gathered a matter of yards from me. Women with tripods and three beautiful, ethnically diverse, perfectly dressed children. They were models doing a photo shoot. They followed direction perfectly.

These were not kids on the beach. I grew up a kid on the beach. This is not what kids on the beach look like.

It was all I could do to stop myself from running by and kicking water on them. I'll bet you a nickle they never had anyone teach them how to skip rocks. I'll bet you a whole dollar they never poked a stick into a dead fish just to check it out.

They were absolutely beautiful children. But they weren't natural children.

And maybe that's it.

And that's why I love writing, because I learn so much from my fingers when I do.

I love what is natural. I love what is mysterious.

I have watched many parents taking photos of their kids out and about. I've seen how frustrated they get when their adorable toddlers refuse to pose for them among the tulips because they would rather pull the petals off the flowers, or pick up the ant from the blade of grass. Parents don't want photos of their kids exploring mysteries.

I think that is tragic. Absolutely tragic. There is nothing more beautiful to me than a child discovering ants for the first time, or flowers, or a dead spider for that matter. That openness and curiosity is beautiful. Curiosity is the opposite of fear. It's a way to fall in love.

But when it comes to curiosity about death, I have yet to see a parent that didn't yell in horror, "Icky!!!! Don't touch that!" Why can't we just be with all of it? (I agree you may not want to touch it, but why not be gentle about it?  Hold the hand back but encourage the looking...talk about it...wonder at what happened...what happened before...what happened after...)

Did he finally get to that place he had dreamt of when he reached the other side?

 

 

 

I've Declared This an Official "Blue Highway" Blog

The reference comes from the novel, Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon. Blue highways are so designated on old road maps (remember when people used paper maps bought in gas stations?), the old secondary roads that took you through little towns that you've never heard of and all manner of oddities, little known historical monuments, people who collect things like giant balls of yarn and diners and juke joints and treasures a plenty.

You can't drive fast on them. Hopefully you wouldn't want to. If you did, you'd miss the whole point of the journey.

I have never mastered the art of writing a scannable blog and I've been blogging for many years now so don't look for anything to change. I've been away from this for a while now and am about to get back in the saddle. That means I have a backlog of half thoughts woven together with obtuse memories and occasional flashes of brilliant insight seasoned with periodic bursts of self doubt and existential angst and sometimes funny song lyrics work that won't leave my head.

You know the drill...grab a cup of tea...I'll try to meander someplace sensible to make the stop off here worth your while.

Nice to be back. Thanks for stopping by...now let's get comfy, shall we?

Best of Times, Worst of Times

I wrote some time ago that I might be in the best time of my life.

That must explain why I still cry every other day.

Seriously, sometimes I mystify even myself with my sweeping generalizations.

The time I wrote that, I did feel that way, mostly because I was so proud of two friends, one of whom seems to be really coming in to her own and another young man who writes in a way that literally takes my breath away and I get to call him my friend.

I was feeling so blessed to see greatness in my friends that I felt at top of the world.

But me...

Maybe I should have entitled this "Fanmail from Some Flounder" (how old IS she?!), because that is what I do now. I flounder.

It may not look like it so obviously from the outside. I've been moving and shaking on the photos. I have worked my butt off establishing all those things that new businesses are supposed to have like legal standing, tax forms, merchant accounts...inventory, places to show the inventory...and I am happy with a great deal of what I have produced and am tweaking those things I'm not 100% happy with yet. 

I'm getting my garden weeded. I've started cooking again. I've been on my bike and have had some wonderful long beach walks. I have had moments where I have felt happy. Sometimes more than just moments.

For all intents and purposes I look to be well on my way where my next chapter is concerned.

But I have never been as happy as I was in those final months with the Michael, his father and my father.

It's beautiful to have the good fortune to find yourself FEELING that you are doing exactly what you came here to do. I remember specific moments with my father, with Michael's father, and certainly with Michael, where I just KNEW...I could just feel that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, was built for, was meant to do in my life, with the people I was meant to do it for. I have never felt as beautiful as I did when I was with those men.

I know a lot of people live their whole lives and never so much as get a taste of that. I know how blessed I have been.

Michael told me that I completed his life. Being his, in that strange way I was, that we don't really have a name for in our language, completed mine. As did caring for my father. As did having Michael's Dad sing old time love songs to me when Michael was out of earshot.

I was so in love with those men and they were so fucking beautiful to be around. Everyone of them funny. Every one kind. Every one let me be exactly who I was and how I was. They made me feel like a queen even when I was on my knees scrubbing the floor like Cinderella.

My life was dedicated to men who were dying for such a long time and now I'm with people who pretty much appear to be living. What am I supposed to do with that?

They say you can't go home again. I've already talked about that where it comes to my physical childhood home. Going back there was not and is not a problem for me. But there is another level where I am really at a loss. How do you go back to being with the living when you've been living with the dying?

I don't know if I can. I'm not even sure I would want to if I could. 

And I don't mean that in a morbid sense. I'm not yearning for death. But honestly, you living people aren't as funny as dying people. You don't appreciate things in the same way. You aren't as gentle. You aren't as kind. You aren't as loving. You don't know how to let things go in the same way. You don't see out of the same lens. You get angry about stupid shit and have to have the last word in the most inane arguments. You don't pay attention in the same way. You don't take your time. You move too fast and you speak too loud and could stand to drop a few of your insecurities and vanities.

Come to think of it, so could I.

Yeah, I have a real knack for offending people these days. And while I'm not saying that there aren't people that I love and respect and enjoy being around, I'm telling you, it just isn't the same. When I am in my dying phase of life (if I have one and don't just drop suddenly), I'm sure I'll be different, too, so I'm not saying I'm any better than any other living person.

And maybe that's my point. I was a better me when I was with people who had let all their shit go. I felt more beautiful because I was more beautiful in their presence. I saw myself in a more pure state than I have been before or since.

And we were so off the grid together that it could be that way. But the world at large isn't like that. I feel like one of those Amish folks I see on the roads in Indiana with their horse drawn buggies with cars zipping all around.

Okay, you might think, "Oh, there she goes with her sweeping generalizations again. I've known some dying people who definitely did not go out in a gentle, loving way." And you are right. I don't think that every dying person goes as gracefully down that last stretch of road. Not by a long shot.

And that's the kicker. I had not one but THREE people in my life at the same time who had given up their egos and then they dropped their bodies and here I am and I so don't fit anymore.

People ask me what I like to take photos of. I say I do contemplative nature photos, and tend toward the macro close-in shots yada yada.

But you know what I love taking photos of?

Dead things.

Butterflies. Fish. Even fleshier beasts. Roadside memorials.

They are beautiful to me.

Like sculpture.

Like love.

And memory.

And longing.

If given a choice between taking a photo of a puppy and a dead coho salmon, I'll choose the salmon.

I fully understand this is not normal.

So here I am with all these photos all framed and ready for sale and part of me the whole time is feeling like I'm not really putting my best work out there for you because my best work isn't what you would want to hang on your walls. I'm trying to produce affordable and attractive home decor all the while I'm amassing photos of disembodied butterfly wings and fish skeletons.

Michael said he would wreck me. You get that close to the mystery...the mystery of our mortality...you get a peek behind the veil with someone who sees the futility in so much of how we spend our lives and you can't go back.

I'm never going to be the same.

It may take the rest of my life to understand that one simple sentence.