Year: 2016

Growing oak

Today is my birthday.
I want, I need for it to be a really quiet one.
As with many things of late, I notice that it is the “the first without Remi” in many years. That is hard.
And in writing that, I understand all of the sudden why my Sister has been so intent in making sure that I don’t just let it slip downstream unnoticed. She is extra thoughtful that way.
So there will be gifts despite my saying that, “You all do enough for me as is” and if the weather permits, maybe we will move the table out to the expansive oak tree under whose reaching arms my Mother and Leonard were married not so long ago.
But it is to another such tree, further down the road that I am thinking just at present. Actually, I have been eyeing it, sometimes surreptitiously, others with open mouthed wonder, since I arrived out at my Sister’s farmhouse, where I am now officially living. Another room and bags to unpack, a place-marker where, thankfully, I am warmly invited to feel at home.
This oak is perhaps not the largest in the neighborhood but I love it for its scars. It’s a many-headed Hydra. How often has it been struck by lightning and yet kept growing? Where can I trace the outlines of branches that were cut to the trunk only to continue pushing out in an opposite direction? It is just there, at the side of the road. It doesn’t have to be the best tree. 
It is just there.
Intuition isn’t needed to divine why this means something to me.
Maybe I can keep one tradition of recent years and get to a museum, as I have always liked to do. As if in seeing art, I can call it towards my heart for the year ahead, knowing that I am driven by creativity and love, determined to fuel up on blind faith and winged hope.
And that, is beautiful. My family here will sing to me and not even off-key.
(My family there will most likely be silent, moving forward on their own trajectory. Best then to “choose joy” and “be here now” – these catchphrases coating wisdom – for we can only be responsible for ourselves.)
I am so grateful for this birthday and a merit badge of 47, so young still – or at least as Thich Nhat Hanh might wish, “Happy Keeping Going.” The oak trees stand strong on their own and yet are very much a part of their environment, the surrounding nature, just as I have my own, my human nature too. And I am proud to still be here. I have fought and cried and laughed and am held by something universal, thrumming in us all.

****

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to speak to someone for a few minutes who has been through unspeakable difficulties in life from his earliest days. And he has fallen down many times and I mean fallen beyond what we can know and yet he managed to get back up, through dedicated work, every time. Over and over again. He spoke quietly, there was no survivor’s swagger; it was a human exchange. We can be so hard on ourselves – me worst of all – and it just points us in the wrong direction. And it isn’t…very humble…because it suggests that we already know the answer and just aren’t – for whatever reason – delivering. If we can have the courage to be honest and then act from a place of compassion –  ok, still struggling with that one also as far as towards myself is concerned – it just makes so much more sense. Otherwise, we will just keep having to start over, which gets exhausting but hey, if that is what has to happen, well, then so be it. That too, broken open but done. I think about something really simple that I read in one of Glennon Doyle Melton‘s articles lately, “Remember. Don’t be afraid. Begin again.”

We don’t have to be the best tree. Let’s keep going.

 Happy Birthday because it just might be today.

Thank you for all of your responses on my previous post, one million pageviews isn’t the same as a million people but in the strength of your kindness you just might make it so.
With much Love and Gratitude,
Heather

*These are just iphone photos (and I know that they are similar to a lot of what I have been posting here of late) but sometimes I think that it is good to have beauty be a simple, everyday occurence that isn’t so preciously documented as to make it seem rare…because it isn’t. 🙂

**No art in a museum today but I had my tarot read by a fascinating man on the street and it was such a fulfilling experience that it did the job just as well. So, living art instead.

One in a…



…million.
This is not at all the post that I wanted to write but sometimes life decides. I actually have been truly missing talking about Provence on Lost in Arles and so have been preparing – with a big intake of breath – some of the other photos that I took during those last weeks in February before coming to the States for some months. These are the things that I do on a Saturday night when I can’t sleep, when the future is bullying, to calm me.
You know, I rarely look at the statiscal end of things for this blog anymore. As I have written previously, at some point I realized that I wasn’t aiming to “build a brand” – seriously, I do admire those who can but it makes me kind of bubble giggle to think about it – and then I just stopped seeing for quite a while, the words wouldn’t roll off my tongue but rather got caught in the back of my throat. So I was pretty silent. I still am, down to sending off missives once a week. It feels odd. With all of this time available, can’t I do more? Be more? Apparently not just right yet.
Do you remember how scared I was that you would all abandon me once that I admitted that I was no longer in the midst of what was pretty much a fairy tale existence? And you all said, “No, I won’t” or “What are you talking about?” You stayed. Nearly everyone – although a few long term readers have bowed out, that happens. And then, more than quite a few of you arrived without my knowing. What I have been so acutely aware of is that not a day goes by when one of you doesn’t reach out to me somehow, either here or by email or on instagram, sometimes signed anonymously or with cryptic aliases. “Just checking in,” is how it is expressed most of the time, that reassuring yet expressly casual hand reaching out across the wires, offering kindness. We are a mighty community.
In fact, a bit more so than I would have guessed.
A few years back, over a rosé-fueled lunch under a leafy terrace in Arles, a very successful friend with a “blog” that is more like an e-zine was teasing me about my laissez-faire attitude towards what I do here. “Do you even know what SEO’s are?” she queried. “Um, South-Eastern Oreos?” I offered (or some such silliness) for I had no idea at the time. When I half-sheepishly offered up the number of pageviews I had that month, she whisked the figures out of the air with her hand. “You can’t go by that,” she responded before giving me several solid, helpful ideas that I tried my best to absorb. But I never did figure out why I couldn’t trust those figures and now I am kind of glad.
Because last night I stumbled upon the statistics page and saw that Lost in Arles had sailed past the milestone of having a million page views. One million.
Those of you who have blogs yourselves know very well such numbers are extremely relative but…I had to admit that for a moment I was sat bolt upright, blinking in surprise. For I am quite proud. I think that I have the right to be on this one, no?
One…one…one…I have been reading quite a lot about the self, including the illusion of what that means along with the counter balance of our connectedness. And I know that to be true not only because I have been able to have a far more direct experience of who I actually am minus all of the adjectives and modifiers these past few months but also because…I feel you too. Now, don’t run away so quickly – or fine, go look at the photos! – but it is true. My friend Ellie has many thousands of people that pray for her on a daily basis and I don’t think that she would mind my sharing with you that she says that she can really sense it directly. I get that. You are all quite present in my life somehow, even when I am not actively conscious of it.
These photos were taken for a dear friend who I have not (yet) met on the eve of her birthday. I don’t have the means to offer much these days but the evening sky was doing its best so that I could send her a gift. A bit of light. If I am sharing them here it is because I realize so clearly that is what we are doing for each other. I had a bit of banter with an old friend about the nature of the world “obsolete” – that I am not overly fond of the finality of it, preferring instead to take a more Buddhist take that things keep going and just transform. The social media folks say that blogs are obsolete but I know better. And so do you. One or one million? Same difference and that is exactly wherein the beauty lies.



Thank you for being here…and in so doing, encouraging me to be true and true to myself. 
It’s a good goal…along with self-love and inner peace.
With much love and gratitude,
Heather 

Casa Kirkpatrick – interiors chez La Contessa

Do you remember what it was like to discover the imaginary landscape of books in your childhood? The ones that marked you? To understand that somewhere between the author’s words and your imagination, an entire universe could enfold?
I would close my eyes and try to conjure the wisps of snow and taste of Turkish Delight in Narnia or the newsboy cries and horse-hoof clops of Dickens’ London. Crouched amidst my dirty clothes in the oak closet of our Victorian house, I knew, I knew that those vistas were the key to a world far bigger than what my little mind with an open heart could fathom. That time travel and possibly even magic just might exist. Perpetually hungry, I would feast on each word until I could picture every detail and not a solitary crumb remained behind.
Fast forward many years and adventures in the real world to this past May. Despite numerous novels consumed, for various reasons, my vision had shrank to almost not knowing…that is until a truly wonderful friend invited me to be a guest in her home. 
Those of you who have been reading here for nearly any length of time (for which I thank you with all of my heart) are aware of Elizabeth, aka La Contessa. Some of you might even refer to her as “All Caps Contessa” for her tendency to exclaim rather than calmly state the obvious. She has long since been something of a Fairy Godmother figure for me (this despite that our ages are not so very far apart), having first sent me as a nearly beribboned present to the amazing Ellie O’Connell Decret (who has since become a dear friend) and then tempting me Westward in order that we could finally meet in person after nearly seven years of correspondence. Her timing was impeccable. She knew that she was needed.
And perhaps, she had an inkling of the delight that would wash over me from the very first instant that I stepped inside the home that she shares with the Italian (more about him soon) and a menagerie of animals. The charm spell was immediate and permanently cast. I clapped my hands in delight for the décoration that had been lovingly set over the 22 years after the couple had bought and renovated the house perched over a rose-filled ravine. The Italian set the brick floors by hand to remind La Contessa of one of her favorite castellos in the Italy where they had lived together while their boys were small things. The many years of having her own antique shop, the Hen House, brought about the arrival of myriad objets, such as a sleigh in the center of the living room, which made sense to her as well as to me. 
“So, what do you want to do today?” she would ask, as I would stretch sleepily after a night of deep dreaming. Sheepishly I would always reply, “Can we just stay here?” and often she would accommodate my wish, as a good hostess tends to do. For I could and did spend days exploring in the miniature and relaxing in the grandeur. Transformed, I was Alice and had found a Wonderland.

Our mutual friend Ellie was in my thoughts constantly, for I knew that she would be as fascinated as I was. And so I picked up my camera for the first time in months so that I could share this novel landscape with her, far away on the other side of two oceans…and with you too. The allure of such enchantment is irresistible to all but the unwisely hardened, non?
Like Winston, their beloved Corgi, I find myself perched and waiting for a return – mine – to Casa Kirkpatrick. I have a wishing feeling it will happen but until then I can summon it in my mind just as I did while savoring the tales of my youth.



Today is Elizabeth’s birthday. I spoke to her this morning as she was setting up a table under the enormous bronze chandelier in the garden for this evening’s festivities. She sounded happy and relaxed as she does more often than not. How I wish that I was there to join the celebration…but from a far I raise a glass of virtual Prosecco to you, my beautiful friend.


Félicitations et Joyeux Anniversaire! 
Tanti baci,
Heather 

I actually also did a post for her birthday last year, she deserves no less.
And she is also the only person who I have ever asked to write a guest post for Lost in Arles.
Lastly, chez elle she currently has up a wonderful story about how she met her Husband – thanks to the House of Gucci – in 1984. 

****


PS. As she is one of the most generous people that I have ever met, I don’t think that La Contessa would mind if I add a word on “her” birthday post to thank all of you. So please know that your incredible responses to my previous post touched me deeply and yet did not surprise me in the least. You are a wonderful group of people and I am very fortunate to be able to welcome you here.

Counting back to light

It feels like we will never be the same sometimes. I understand.
Because we won’t and we aren’t, already. How our life changes and changes us, so swiftly, every day, so that we are swept up, often mercifully unaware, just breathing, moving through.
A wise friend counseled me not long ago that sometimes, there are no answers. I wanted so desperately to understand what had happened in my life, to get that knowledge all under control so that I could heal but I couldn’t. Because the answers were not mine to give. And finally, I can only be responsible for myself.
These are dark times. Since the Thursday night terrorist attack in Nice, I have been crying and praying. I collapsed on my knees from the pain and buried my head into the seat of my reading chair like a child, spent. 
One night, right before I left Provence, she gave me an au revoir sunset. Spectacular. I leaned out of the window from the room of my own and photographed each phase until night. I sat with the weight of my shattered heart and every time I have looked at these photos since then, I am taken directly back to those emotions of deep loss and fear. And yet I kept them. 
Yesterday, I realized that we could reverse their order and count back to the beginning, to light.
And in so doing, we can gently remove layer after layer of the veils that cover our truest nature. 
Love.
Therein lies the path to sanity – one that I need to consciously be on right now – and eventually, through our grieving, to Peace.

There is no room to apologize for what might sound overly sentimental in emergencies such as these, so I will just say, “I need you. Can we do this together?” Ok, then, thank you. Here we go.

To Peace.
I am sending you all so much love and strength right now. It is all I know to do. My prayers are for all of us, for those directly touched by this unspeakable tragedy in my beautiful adopted country and beyond.
 

       
I have been listening to this album by Moby before going to bed. It has helped me. I find the first movement especially beautiful. You can find it for free by clicking here.
 On Thursday, I stayed up late praying and meditating. I use the Insight Timer app on my phone and one of the things that I really appreciate about it is that I can see who else is using it at the same moment all over the world. Well, at around 2am, I could see so many people waking up in France and joining me, far more than I had ever seen online before. That gave me so much hope. It is our instinct to survive and find our way out of the darkness, be it personal or collective. I only have an inkling of “why” we are being put through such trials but again, having an answer is not really the solution. 
We are.




Ghost blooms

#blacklivesmatter #bluelivesmatter #alllives matter

All lives matter.

I woke up at 4:30am in a cold sweat, my sheet had somehow wrapped itself tightly around my body. Mummylike, immobile. When I blinked, my eyelids ached and slowly my awareness drifted down through my bones until I accepted that I was ill.

The last thing that I had read before turning out the light was of the ambush in Dallas. I had rolled onto my back, staring into the darkness. Helpless then, also. My sadness broke my body in two.

“How much longer will it be?” I whispered towards the lowing moon. Is this the apex of our shredded state? Through this roiling hatred, I don’t recognize my country anymore. And how I chewed on those words like dice rattling, too similar, too recent.

And yet,

amidst the stillness I could feel my heart opening like ghost blooms unfolding with silent stealth,
I choose Love.
I choose Unity.
I choose Faith.
I choose Hope.
I believe. Like petals pushing on my burning forehead, open. 
Tell me we are together in this and I will take it as a balm. 
For I know you to be true and that is healing, our humanity.
Change will come.

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