Embedded Files
I'd been transfixed by the firmaments** over the past two years (since Julian's passing, in my presence, on May 13, 2023). Firmaments in the sense of both the limits and the limitlessness of existence. I'd been feeling less than myself, and counting that celestial hint as merely a creature's common, necessary—and prayerfully!—graceful bow towards the final curtain. 🎶 But I have at least two remarkable people in my life who cherish my existence 🎶 Inspired by their tenderness, I began a journey to mortal fortitude involving multiple functional and specialist medical professionals. On August 27th, thoroughly smeared and dubbed with a diagnosis, I began daily communion with a tiny snow-white pill.
Suddenly, astonishment! Like Alice in Wonderland (or Dorothy no longer in Kansas), the firmaments within me shifted into other-dimensional gear. What had looked like an unyielding glass ceiling has proven (to me, and unequivocally) the wholeness of the 'body-mind complex'--a notion of which my dear mother was a devotee.
Definitions of firmament
the heavens or the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing
a sphere or world viewed as a collection of people. (example, "one of the great stars in the American golfing firmament")
Yesterday afternoon (after 17 days of communion), an extraordinary sequence of events led me to capture and then to ponder this poem, which I photographed while standing in a crowded 6 train on the way to meet my daughter and a new friend for dinner.
Firmament of Glass
Firmament of Glass
Vievee Francis (2012)
Morning, the glistening
grass draws me into the day,
as if new meant separate
from the day before—
and I, having that human part
that can be transfixed by bauble or blade,
Limp out again, a believer,
into memory's emerald glint.
The artwork in the poster is a section from Katherine Bradford's "Queens of the Night" mosaic series (2021) on display at the 1st Avenue (BMT Canarsie) Line between Manhattan and Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway in Brooklyn. See full mosaic here.
Katherine Bradford’s Long and Winding Road (WMagazine, 7/20/22)
This poem (and accompanying artwork) could be the subject of all my blogs for the rest of this year. I will constrain myself to say as few words as I can muster (yes, less is more!) about what the 6th line conjures for me.
That can be transfixed by bauble or blade... could mean many things, but because I have been reading about and thinking about kinship/human connections in light of emerging research and concern over the health of our biosphere, that was the first thing that came to mind. Transfixed means, for me, a state of being stuck in a mindset that defines itself as belonging somewhere on a dualistic spectrum. On one end is the bauble—a plaything (a romantic connection perhaps, or celebrity crush—attractive but insubstantial. A bauble also connotes any transient pleasure, especially the pleasures of youth. On the other end is the blade—a weapon (enemy, or "other" in the context of kinship)—symbolizing the pain of old age and sickness, the fear of surgery/death, and the Reaper's scythe.
Everything to Know about the Scythe (video, Bare Mtn Farm)
In sum, either the bauble or the blade can transfix us, rendering us paralyzed, unable to fulfill our deeper desires. Doesn't matter which; the effect is the same. "Trying on the treasures of youth," as sung by The Indigo Girls in "Power of Two" or fear of that "last twist of the knife" (T.S. Eliot's classic poem "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"), both lead to the same stagnation of body-mind-spirit.
One last uncoincidental coincidence: (there were several - someday, please ask me about the bee on the long white sleeve of a commuter; the conspiratorial conversation between the man in the green shirt beside the bee-man about green-seeming tigers, and the seasonal color-changes of reindeer eyes) this quote of the day from TED Tumblewords, a new game I've been playing on my phone.
"When you're confronted with something that you know needs to be changed, you have to find an entry point."
Georgette Bennett, in "3 Steps to Build Peace & Create Change" (January 2023)
Last words. Bauble or Blade? Trick question. We don't need to choose. Let's get off that guaranteed trainwreck track. There's another path.
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