An Average Life

This is poetry’s province; a form of deep memory; a place from which to witness the intangible, unspeakable thresholds of incarnation we misname an average life.--From The Poetic Narrative Of Our Times, by David Whyte

The same mist I drove out of this morning at 8 a.m. hung in the trees at 2 p.m. when I returned with the kids from school. At dusk, thicker still when I step out the front door for newly split madrone, startling a deer from behind the truck where she’d been feasting on gutter acorns out of the mounds of dumped leaves of Oakmont and elsewhere. I watch her three darting leaps up the hill, listen to an owl settling, hooting, in the top of a Doug Fir, wipe the black bark sludge from my hands….a few of my father’s old fence boards into the stove, and the madrone soon catches. While soup simmers, I sneak in a few sentences of an email to Denmark on the kitchen counter laptop, though something (timing of the Gods? obsessive 360 surveillance at 30 second intervals?) causes me to glance over my shoulder, in time to see my 3 year old under the table where he’s managed to plug in the iron and set out a few large silk napkins like his sister did last week. So matter of fact, intent, I have to admire his careful movements.

I finish the job for him, ironing his “cape”, tying it about his shoulders; then, rummage for a new undisclosed location for the iron. Naked but for his warm little cape and superhero boxers, he throws his arms around my neck, demands to give a kiss of thanks on my forehead. I carry him outside, where we listen together for the owl—a long moment. But dusk has deepened, the woods silent. A moss-damp, mist rich stillness.

Which invites listening. Attunement. I talk often with my mother friends about rhythms of togetherness and apartness—how as one’s children grow, one’s need for retreat changes. After eight years of raising children, I’m surprised to find occasional moments of shared solitude—if there’s such a thing…often in the woods (listening for owls) on our acre, or out at the ocean, the sense of renewal is as good with my family as when (if) I’m alone. (Or is that the result of writing regularly at night when they are asleep, or the result of no longer breastfeeding--no longer sleep deprived or in total hormonal uplink with the youngest).

I sense a heightened collective listening as we enter 2010. David Whyte’s post, The Poetic Narrative of Our Times, raises some beautiful concerns. Whyte writes: It may be that we live in a time of collective heartbreak, where for the first time in history we are being asked to witness the disappearance and reappearance on a global scale of what it means to be fully human; to give away our identity and see how it returned to us through a sincere participation in the trials and necessities of the coming years. Opening with descriptions of night mist and mountain-scapes, Whyte uses nature to ground his accurate but sorrowful observances and gives sobering examples from political as well as family life scenes to make his point about how much we stand to lose. On a positive note, he suggests, It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living. He calls on poetry to give an “unflinching” view of life on life’s terms, with all of its "terrible beauty" (see the rest of his post here: www.huffingtonpost.com/david-whyte/the-poetic-narrative-of-o_b_378536.html.

As a fond straddler of present incarnation and night time dreamlife, I’ve noticed a paradox: the more deeply I relax into my body before falling asleep, the more likely it is I’ll go lucid that night in dream. As if the “aloha” to each individual cell fires their imaginations to let go of their anchors and congregate in the astral body, take flight, out of the constraints of time and particular incarnation. I think we’ll need to inhabit both: earth as well as star realm, present incarnation as well as those of our dreams, in order to forge a consciousness our planet and our children might survive.

Further reading:

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle—I’m halfway through this excellent compilation of spiritual understanding—with its “evolve or die” call to growth.

Story of a Storyteller (Cathryn Fairlee) and A Musician (Stephen Pryputniewicz)

Since the birth of my children, my father Stephen Pryputniewicz has cared for my children one day each week so I may pursue my writing (and wife Robyn as well, once she joined our family). I maintain this blog and write due to the blessing of their time. I wanted to start 2010 by thanking them—and writing about Stephen’s upcoming performance.

Currently a keyboard accompianist for The Hot Curtain Revue (a West County Comedy Improvisation Group active for the last thirty years comprised of founding members Scott and Darlene Kersnar, members Susan Packer, Frank Ferris, Steve Page, Michelle Jensen, and light techs Mike and Waits Taylor), Stephen performs next (piano, guitar, drum) with storyteller Cathryn Fairlee on January 23rd at Guerneville Community Church from 7-9 p.m.

How did you become involved with Cathryn’s work?

I first met Cathryn when I played at her wedding years ago. Last summer Cathryn showed up at a house concert and we spoke of Patrick Ball's storytelling punctuated by harp music. Soon after, Cathryn saw a Hot Curtain Revue performance and suggested we collaborate. Cathryn is part of a storytelling association and has traveled to many countries (including China, Guatemala, Ireland, Bali, Mexico, Turkey) but wanted to bring her work to a West County performance.

How would you describe her work?

Cathryn tells traditional stories from all around the world often including songs.

What draws you to her work?

I love storytelling in general, and Cathryn's is very theatrical. I especially like her use of distinct voices for various characters.

How did you choose the music to go with the work?

We started with a survey of music I already can play, and a handful of Cathryn's stories...kind of a synergistic jam session. Hard to describe: you had to be there. There are a few stories where I play an entire piece that sets the tone, some stories have little sprinkles of music throughout and other stories have music at the beginning and the end.

What have you learned by working with storytelling—how is it different, for example, than working with River Repertory Theater (a former West County Theater Company)?

I have learned to be flexible, and to listen carefully. It is similar to working with theater: knowing the story well enough to anticipate the music cues. However, storytelling is not scripted like a play. The story is memorized, but not verbatim. So the words that cue a piece of music may vary from telling to telling.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a piano player for improv theater?

Making the music loud enough for the actors to hear, while still being able to hear the actors! Having dozens of musical snippets at the ready for any mood.

How about challenges of playing music as a background to storytelling?

Rebuilding my guitar finger calluses after years of no guitar playing.

Any other upcoming performances where people can hear your playing?

To be announced: a performance by the Hot Curtain Revue, likely this spring.

To find out more about Hot Curtain Revue or upcoming performances with Cathryn:
contact Stephen Pryputniewicz at: kapoosta@sonic.net

or Cathryn Fairlee at: cfair.@monitor.net

Performance location: Guerneville Community Church, 14520 Armstrong Woods Rd.
Reservations by the 20th: $10; Tickets at the Door: $12. 707-433-2297

Lively Q and A to follow.

Watch for an article forthcoming in January by Cathryn Fairlee regarding this performance in The West County Gazette.

For more information on Patrick Ball (Theater of Legend-Celtic Harp and Spoken Word): www.patrickball.com

Sky Walking

Watching shiny ribbons of blackstrap molasses fold into one another in a silver measuring cup. The kids rolling out dough, shaping their ginger kin. A week of late nights baking, knitting scarves, wrapping, rushing to and from, and voila: Christmas Eve, signaling an end to last minute everything.

I’m seeing the sky again—a good sign—easy to go for weeks without looking up. There’s a section of our country road I watch for now, just after a steep set of S turns sloping down. As you ascend the next curve, the oak trees on either side of the road lean towards one another, leaving a gap of sky in the shape of an hourglass. It is nearly five, and darkening rapidly: the hour of leaping deer. The pavement wet, wisps of mist hovering just above three rows of nested hills, the farthest tree-line a dusky blue, so familiar it warms.

Easy also, between hand-me-down Safari brochures (Africa! India! Egypt!), books on spiritual pilgrimage, and e-mail advertisements for prophecy retreats, to feel anywhere but here is better. If I just had the right guide, the right ticket, I could travel to the right place, imbibe the right information, and grow, bigtime. In The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit, Shirley MacLaine writes about why the physical landscape (the 500 mile famed trek along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain) so dramatically affects walkers and propels them into grappling with unresolved life issues (here via the character of St. John of the Cross) :

“the ley lines [along the walk] were directly aligned with the constellations of stars, which would help resolve conflicts if properly understood…The dreams and visions of people walking the trail created footmarks of past truth, which created reminiscences, which were part of the human subconscious lurking within each of us as foreshadowings. (p. 85).” Further… “people always return to old haunts because they intuit that the karma there needs to be resolved.”

For a former spiritual “quester” (dream group, channeling group, reiki trade, chronic swapper with fellow book divas of destiny such as Kieran, Childs, Duane), motherhood grounds me squarely on this acre, or this 30 mile radius of S curves. I’m thinking you could “walk the Camino” in dream. Wondering if your astral self would soak in that kind of info-energy (to borrow a term from Gary E. Schwartz, author of The Afterlife Experiments). Or, is the physical body a better conduit, and it’ll (the trip to Spain) just have to wait until the kids are in college? Maybe you’re better off just sleeping when you sleep, since the daytrip with the kids burns so many brain calories, and you need the “down-charge” of dreamless rest.

Or could that lovely hourglass gap between the trees be its own portal? I’m just asking. But now that I’ve asked, I’ve probably set in motion a pilgrimage of dreams. Let them be be hearty, but sweet.

Photo: taken by Sarah Doherty, Castro Theater close-up, San Francisco

"Winter Solstice" Sculpture Poem

Last May, I gave sculptor Sandy Frank a handful of poems (so she could choose one to pen across one of her magnificent male torsos). We're not through yet--but I wanted to post the poem and photo in honor of the approaching solstice. Combining the static element of written words and penning them across a 3-d surface has its challenges, and Sandy tells me the alchemy is far from perfected (she has other ideas in store), but here is a "draft" of our project so far.

Winter Solstice

Live long enough and you outlive
somewhere a lover, one you cast aside
or one you chased. One who didn't want you--
at least, not then--or one you cried to leave, but left.
No matter what the parting, there's a last meeting
in the eggplant black of dream, where we divide up all the eggs,
and ride a Lapland sled, our unborn children
falling in the snow. We'll not stop--
we have no choice: you're dying
and outside the dream my husband's body
turns towards mine. The Earth's
one lover lighter. The Northern lights
remain, the silver sound-prints of the reindeer's bell.


Forgive the iphone snapshots--I promise a link to studio quality photos (the full sculptures extend to upper thigh, complete with male genitalia) and a January post with Sandy's thoughts on the sculpture-poetry process (post-holiday frenzy).

Sandy's work: http://www.sandyfrankfineart.com/

“Niagara Falls” and “Birth Angel” Up

Niagara Falls—written for my late stepfather Jon—is up at Tiny Lights: http://www.tiny-lights.com/flash.php?id=265
…When I couldn’t sleep at dawn, you brought me for a walk along the rim. Then took your own photo of the silver shelf at the top, so still who’d guess at the crystal thunder below, how delicate the thresholds, and our balance, dreaming, taking turns, half the planet flooding the astral at a time…

Excerpt paired here with Jon’s photo—taken that early morning. Bless you, Jon, and brother Jaye.

Also I’m sweetly honored/pleased to announce I’ve accepted an invitation from editor Jessica Powers to try the wearing of a new hat: as poetry editor at The Fertile Source (view Jessica’s welcome and one of my blockprints, “Birth Angel:” http://fertilesource.com/?p=578 ). Birth Angel dates back to the “one-child” year (before the next two children came along), when I entertained the possibility of earning a living making handmade greeting cards. The 50 cent industry profit, along with motherhood, swiftly whittled my list of loves down to two essentials: family and poetry.

Though I still am tempted (now that I’m able to consider the world above the diaper line again) to rummage loose the tubes of color and the little black Speedball roller. Washing the printboard off, watching the blues and golds and greens swirl down into the sink drain still trumps the finished artwork, I have to admit. Even tried photographing it--but like rainbows in oil slicks or Tibetan sand paintings you just have to Be Present all alone with your joy and the morphing colors vanishing before your eyes, sappy as it sounds.

Boats of Mercy and the Gift of Journaling

...Look,/boats of mercy/embark from/our heart at the/oddest knock...
Kay Ryan, The Niagara River (2005), from "Chinese Foot Chart"

So when a wave recedes, and you’re standing there with your ankles moored, it’s best to close your eyes against vertigo…or risk losing your balance, confusing your body’s point of anchorage and giving in to the headlong return to the sea.

That’s how it has felt this month to write against the rest of my life and its responsibilities.

Over hazelnut decaf mocha, I discussed happiness with two of my favorite mom writer/artists. (See Jessica Powers' recent review (Can women be smart, empowered, AND happy? ) of Ariel Gore’s latest book, Bluebird: women and the psychology of happiness, on this very subject). Are we to only be fulfilled by our children? On the other hand, I asked my friends, “Will our kids think we are narcissists for pursuing our writing?” We each hoped not, because the few hours away are worth the recharge (the ability to return to our families having tended to ourselves). We each hoped we could deepen our artistic/writerly endeavors, while mothering our children with love and poise. Is it possible? To do both well? That’s what I’m after; it isn’t easy.

The retreating wave feeling descended this month for a number of reasons:

1) the holidays—though we had harmony at our Thanksgiving table and did not, after all, as was suggested in this week's NY Times article (Food, Kin and Tension at Thanksgiving), resort to playing “cruel comment” Bingo, which you win by running into another room to dial a friend with news you’ve heard a row’s worth of wretched, time-worn remarks from family members. I love my family and love time with them; fitting everyone in becomes the mind-scramble, on top of the pandemonium of the kids loose from school and schedule.

2) changes in my husband’s schedule for the coming year

3) my tiny laptop (seven years old) finally crashing (was it the frayed, duct-taped power cord? No, said the employees at Radio shack, in their loyal, customer-ethical way, both talking me out of buying their $100 power cord. “Try moving everything using a flash disk”, they suggested sagely. Tilting the greenish line-warped laptop screen just so once the kids and the husband were safely snoring, I salvaged my files).

4) loss of a writer friend (see last post)—lovely Barbara Robinette Moss, 54, artist, writer, in full bloom with her work. Over the last ten years, while she bravely battled her illness, she furthered her work and her skills, and had the time to look at whatever essay or poem I mailed off to her. Every time I talked to her she had a new conquest: “just finished a screenwriting course in New York,” “took an acting class,” “just opened an art-gallery with my Duane,” “will be teaching in Taos this summer.”

Inspired by Barbara’s daring, I am starting a new project for the New Year—poetry recordings with music. As soon as I learn how to get the right widget on the blog, how to get the microphone to talk to my computer, transform the wave file to mp3 etc, I will be posting these new collaborations—poetry set to piano music with my father Steve. We are looking at the Egypt series—debut poem, “Nefertiti Among Us.” It isn’t that I’m giving up on the world of print or on-line journal submissions (though these poems have been passed on three times so far) it is just that I don’t want to wait to play any longer.

I have kept a journal since I was five, and when life gets hectic, that is often the only connection I have to my writing. When I am feeling tired, when that retreating wave feeling comes and I fear I will never finish writing the words I am meant to write in this lifetime, I tend to feel journal writing is not enough. But I’m coming to see one’s writing truly is a mosaic, and it doesn’t matter if you write words down on a candy wrapper, in a journal, as a prelude to a poem, call it what you will, you do not know where it might end up years from now when you finally figure out where it belongs. Francine du Plessix Gray speaks to this in her essay “Black Mountain: The Breaking (Making) of a Writer” from the Collection Adam, Eve, and the City.

du Plessix Gray writes: “by 1926 I had two children. I lived in deep country and in relative solitude, encompassed by domestic duties. The journal was becoming increasingly voluminous, angry, introspective. The nomadic tomboy, finally denied flight and forced to turn inward, was beginning to explode. One winter day, I felt an immense void, great powerlessness, the deepest loneliness I’d ever known. I wept for some hours, took out a notebook…(p. 331).” She goes on to describe how the re-workings of those writings became the first chapter of Lovers and Tyrants, and how her mentor Charles Oslon had encouraged her to faithfully keep a journal. I can relate to the intense feeling of isolation and motherhood she describes, as well as the power of steady journaling. Inevitably you reach the core, your potential.

Heartprints: Barbara Robinette Moss, Airplanes, and the Midwest

Just back from a remembrance celebration for artist and writer Barbara Robinette Moss, (Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter, Fierce—for excerpts see: http://www.barbaramoss.com/ or an earlier post) recovering from the collision of aloneness and togetherness that occurs when you fly across the country for love of someone no longer incarnate to be in a room full of grieving strangers. By night’s end, familiars, via the common, palpable, bond of love for our late friend as expressed by speaker after speaker (furthering Barbara’s presence in our midst) in Kansas City.

Planes leave. On time. As did mine, without pity, as my husband and I encountered malfunctioned gas pumps on the freeway (20 minute lockdown) and the 5 a.m. mistaken merge onto the Bay Bridge heading away from the airport, with maniacal hairpin u-turn at the bottom of Treasure Island costing us another 20 minutes.

Once I got over the shock of missing my plane (how could I plan so carefully for the kids but fail to plan for my own departure--pages of notes re: pickup, drop off, carpool, carpool mom phone numbers, Aikido outfits packed, play-dates listed, dinner menus, backup helpers, backup backup helpers, etc), I used the 9 extra hours at the Oakland airport to put a dent in The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death by Gary E. Scwartz, Ph.D (with William L. Simon). A friend had hooked me on one of the book’s central images: that of the heartbeat, with its own unique sound-print, radiating out and out into space long after our physical incarnation has ended (maybe for eternity, is the theory).

“Is it possible,” the authors ask, “that cardiac energy provides a loving bond that not only exists in the physical realm but continues as info-energy after physical life has ceased?” p. 22. They started “with the hypothesis, the working assumption, that science can establish that love exists, that consciousness exists, and that survival of consciousness exists, in the same way that science has established that gravity exists, that electrons exist, that photons from ‘deceased’ stars continue to exist” (p. 11). I’m a believer, so such reading preaches to the choir, but for skeptics out there, check it out.

Hours later, with an afterlife hangover, overdosed on airport food and bad coffee, I found myself on the last leg of my flight to Iowa City. Incapable of finding the silver lining in my botched departure. Until my cab driver began to talk. About how he was really a singer in a duo. It was all coming back to me—the nature of Iowa City and its inhabitants: if you’ve ever lived in Iowa City any length of time, you discover everyone from your mail carrier to your street-sweeper has a manuscript. Hidden somewhere. So far this cab driver had admitted he was really a singer and a musician. But then he adds, “I’m glad to drive you, I was hoping I’d get an English major, actually. You know, I write a bit too.”

I perked up. Then: “My town--North Liberty—has a great library. Just got done reading a real good book by this lady…I’m sure you don’t know her…but we invited her to come and give a reading from her book, Zeus’s Daughter. Barbara Robinette Moss? Ever heard of her? I was hoping to take a class from her some time.” I put one hand on my heart and the other on his arm. “Stop it,” I said, “she’s the reason I’m here.” Far more eloquent stories about Barbara’s continuing presence and her effect on everyone she knew circulated at her remembrance, but I felt blessed by this tiny synchronicity.

It turns out perfect planning didn’t have much to do with catching planes on time, for three days later I found myself once again in the 5:30 a.m. dark, panicking, just off Highway 218, staring by the glow of my i-phone at the muffler of my friend’s car at our feet. Bless Google, and yellow taxi. Though last to board, I managed to catch my flight to Kansas City.

In anticipation of further trouble, I padded an extra hour for my return trip to the airport to fly home to Oakland. The hour came in handy: the friend (Tom--innocent! no ticket!!) driving me to the airport not only got pulled over by the cops, but took 4 wrong turns merging onto the freeway and needed an extra half hour to find a gas station.

But I’d do it all over again—for the magical, synchronous hours I had with friends in Iowa City—sleeping in Mary’s tiny Midwest garret, the cold, crisp air, the cherub angel and Escher print above the green armchair. The blue-black crosshatched pattern of the branches on the barren tree outside the window. For breakfast quiche with Bonnie, doves cooing in the background. For reconnecting with my poet friends Tonja (http://www.papagenopoetry.com) and Laurie, my dancing friend Renee, other friends of heart Ann and Carol and Jeff. For the realization that the writer self I nurtured in Iowa City still thrives and remains as deeply important to me as the mother self I’ve reigned from internally for the last ten years.

And last, for the friends and family of Barbara I came to meet, and stories I heard about Barbara—whose heartprint I can sense, believe, is radiating out and out into the Milky Way.

Further Reading:

2004 interview with Barbara Robinette Moss: http://www.jodyewing.com/barbara_moss_10_04.html


An article about the gallery Barbara and husband Duane opened together: http://presentmagazine.com/full_content.php?article_id=1600&full=yes&pbr=1