The Blue Mosque

28 Friday Sep 2012

…but this blue I’m compelled to glorify

… this blue must be gold’s daughter… whether in grief or relief,

no one could know…

from: Another Poem on Blue by Claire Bateman

Istanbul: I was staying in one of the heavy stone buildings, thick walled as a castle, with high, high ceilings. These rooms hold the cool in summer and keep the radiators steaming in the cold months. I walked the hill on cobblestone and brick until my feet ached. The stones in Beyoglu remind me: this was a powerful empire that lasted many centuries, undefeated.

On one sleepless night I stared at a thick baroque wall across the ally from my bedroom and promised myself when I was on the other side of Istanbul by the Blue Mosque, I would soak up the womb-like space, would let it nurture me.

The last three days, we stayed there, at a small hotel in Sultanahmet with a great view of the Blue Mosque. I would wake in the night and see it filling the glass doors of our room – that opened onto a small porch – calling me home like a mother.

I learned to visit at the right time – between the early morning prayers and the arrival of hoards of tourists. It is quiet and nearly empty then. I would sit by a column and feel as if I were just a tiny child inside that strong, vast, curved space that rises many stories above me, rounding the lift of, say, a cathedral. Instead of an architectural arrow to heaven, here are the breasts and womb from earth. Each patterned dome is complete, yet they link and rise, with one great perfect canopy at the apex. The mother of all buildings.

In grief or relief, I weep, thankful that I experienced years of meditative concentration which allows me to be present in this sublime environment, to let where I am be in my field, beneath, around and above me. I am here. I sense this enormous room, and let it nurture me, let it hold me. I take in its gifts, I breathe out gratitude.

The Bosphorus – and Solomon

22 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Bosphorus, DJ Solomon Kahn, Istanbul, Travel

≈ 16 Comments

Yesterday Solomon and Nicole were supposed to be married. But that was not meant to be, due to Solomon’s death in January. Shabda and I are here in Istanbul, and have been for several days. I felt the best way to bring closure to this last appointment our son had made, was to travel up the beautiful waterway that divides the European Continent and Asia – the Bosphorus. We were with our UK friends, Cinda and Tansen, and wanted to make a comfortable day of it, which meant taking the boat as far north as it ran, then taking a taxi back to the city in the afternoon.

We began by catching a 10:30 boat, which was quite full, as it was sunny and warm after days of showers. It departs daily from the Golden horn, a kind of inlet in the heart of Istanbul, then joins a remarkable kind of river, known as the Bosphorus, on its way to the Black Sea. In the course of thirty-some miles, this salt channel passes under two suspension bridges. As we traveled back and forth between the European and Asian sides, the river became a clearer blue, the shoreline went from a continual urban landscape to villages, and finally, up closer to the entrance to the Black Sea, wooded mountainous countryside.

Just past the second bridge, an hour into the cruise, I knew it was the right moment. I pulled out a photo of Solomon and Nicole taken in our backyard, their eyes the same color as the water. I held it over the side of the boat with some of Solomon’s ashes. In front of the beautiful village of Kanlica (pronounced Kahn-li-ja) I let the photo and the ashes go.

It’s amazing how a small ritual like this can bring a feeling of ease, of completion to the ragged heartache of the day. OK, the moment seemed to say, you can let go of this wedding that was not meant to be, let go of this and return to present time. Here in this beautiful place on earth, on the water with a light breeze on a sunny autumn day in Turkey, I’ve done what I came here to do. The next couple of stops brought us into an even more peaceful location. Finally the boat stopped at the fishing village of Beykoz – the end of the line.

Shabda led us to the Baba Restaurant where we sat at a table right next to the water, the clear sea-blue water. It was so peaceful after some days in the city of 18 million people. The quiet was like a strong presence. We ordered and ate delicious fresh Sea Bass and another local fish, Dorado, cooked to perfection. Here was the perfect company. The perfect food. The perfect day.

Very much like a day with Solomon. This cruise and lunch and easy time with friends. Yet I imagine he’d have rented a fast boat and would return at evening, passing under the second bridge, the one with a thousand bright purple lights lit like the Golden Gate Bridge. He would would enter the harbor and see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia glowing on the hill. After docking the boat he, Nicole, and his family and friends would take the short ride up the steep tunnel tram to the top of the hill where he would be scheduled to spin at one of the dance clubs on the night streets near Tunnel Square. Losing a child is a heartbreak, but Solomon always did his best to make the best of any situation. His harmonious life continues to shine in all of us.

Notes: (In the photo to the right, the small white diamond is the photograph…The white X on the large top photo is the place on the Bosphorus where the ashes went.)

Beyoglu, Istanbul: On the Road!

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Uncategorized

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Beyoglu, Itanbul (pronounced Bayolu with a silent G). It’s 3:30 AM and I’m standing at a very tall window against the cool metal radiator – just like the one I had in my room as a child – looking out at the warm, late night across the Bosphorus water to Asia, South Turkey. Below the window is the old Mevlevi Tekke or Lodge, which survived as a museum during the repressive reign of Ataturk in the first part of the 19th century. It is filled with a small urban forest that moves in the wind, and between the trees I can see tall, pale gravestones, each crowned with a sikke (tomb shaped hat). A lone grey cat prowls the grounds.

We arrived this evening at this old apartment at the top of Tunnel Square. Our landlord owns the restaurant across the street, where we feasted on yogurt and a house kebab at dinner. Our building has 77 marble steps – to the 3rd floor – the building is like a fortress with 20 foot ceilings. At night, the broad cobblestone avenue – Istaklal – off Tunnel Square, is crowded with strollers. Beautiful white and blue arabesques are suspended like holiday banners above the street up toward Taksim Square. I saw a woman who looked over 80 years old playing a saz, sitting on the side of the street. Drummers and other string instruments were on every block. Lots of ice cream stores and bookstores.

Tomorrow we will cross the Galata Bridge across Golden Horn, the channel that runs North East in the European side of this city, separating the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Museum area from this busy hill top above Tunnel in Beygolyo. More to come! I’m a bit intoxicated at the moment. Woke again to the Call to Prayer, which seems to clean the air all over the Middle East. My prayers for World Peace joined in with Allah Hu Akbar!

A Taste: Napa Valley Writers’ Conference

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Arthur Sze, Brenda Hillman + Bob Haas, Events, Forrest Gander, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Poetry, Wendy Taylor Carlisle

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brenda hillman, writing

Every year there is a delicious writers’ conference in St Helena, about an hour and 15 minutes from my house. A couple of times I’ve attended for the week, but usually I go up for a day and immerse myself in a poetry craft talk offered at 9:00 in the morning by an admired poet. This year I joined my friend poet Wendy Taylor Carlisle and her husband David for a talk by Brenda Hillman. Brenda is a poet with a brilliant mind and very good heart. My mind and body loves the way her talk makes me feel – often on the edge of aha – that’s it, but deeply relaxed in my own trust of her surprising word choices.

The talk began with a “bacteria” conversation, linked by scientific statements. Then she picked up the six questions listed below. There were poems to illustrate her points. Forrest Gander read a Cesar Vallejo poem in Spanish. Eavan Boland read Cascando by Samuel Beckett. Brenda mentioned this poem touched her long ago and still does:

…the hours after you are gone are so leaden

they will always start dragging too soon

the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want

bringing up the bones the old loves

sockets filled once with eyes like yours….

Brenda spoke rapidly and the mic was lower than I’d have preferred, so I can only throw out a few kernels of her

Brenda Hillman and Forrest Gander

talk: something about the mysteries of sound and sense, the balance of sound and image in her poetry. Some phrases: “Poetry that does not connect to the heart is worthless.” ~~ “Is there an original mystery? Mystery of language (goes into creating poetry), mystery of the non-human world, including everything that is observable that is not us. That is the shape upon which my observations and longings are formed.” ~~~ “I think of myself as disheveled wildflowers rather than a single poppy.”

She created her lecture around 6 questions to begin and end with. I loved copying them for this blog, since they are thought provoking and profound.

1 How do we find a balance between the use of language combinations chosen for their sound qualities(weird / cool diction) vs. meaning based or more image-based word combinations…?

2 The dilemma is how to write about the mystery without destroying it… This is what I know about poetry–– it is the shape on which my observations and longings are formed.

3 As a narrator, I frequently feel unreliable. Sometimes I read my own writing and I don’t know who wrote it. Might I write as someone for whom kindness is an instinct? My poems can tell stories which are true but not mine.

4 Poems as individual units and also as parts of a collection: I’m wondering about the process of putting together a poetry collection (or different ways of conceptualizing a whole made up of these individual poems or sets of poems). [I’m] wondering how much of this is determined in the initial writings vs. while you are putting together a collection… I can’t quite formulate a question, but my poems have been coming in sets for a while.

5 When / how to try to structure poems in relation to each other (rather than just as individual units)?

6 How is it going? (Depression? Energy? All energy in poetry is your guide). Here is a poem I like by Brenda:

Street Corner by Brenda Hillman

There was an angle

where I went for

centuries not as a

self or feature but

exhaled as a knowing

brick tradesmen engineered for

blunt or close recall;

soundly there, meanings grew

past a second terror

finding their way as

evenings, hearing the peppermint

noise of sparrows landing

like spare dreams of

citizens where abstraction and

the real could merge.

We had crossed the

red forest; we had

recognized a weird lodge.

we could have said

song outlasts poetry, words

are breath bricks to

support the guardless singing

project. We could have

meant song outlasts poetry.

<> <> <>

Other excellent poets were at the conference. Here is a taste of Forrest Gander and Arthur Sze:

A fragment from prize-Wining Poet and translator, Forrest Gander:

Citrus Freeze by Forrest Gander

To the north, along Orange Blossom Trail,

thick breath of sludge fires.

Smoke rises all night, a spilled genie

who loves the freezing trees

but cannot save them.

Snow fine as blown spiders.

The news: nothing……

Words from Forrest: “Art is not the waging of taste only nor the exercise of argument, but like love the experience of vision, the revelation of hiddenness.” ~~ “Perhaps eros is the fundamental condition of that expansion of meaning necessary to poetry, and of cognition itself. The father of western logic, Socrates, claimed that he had only one real talent: to recognize at once the lover and the beloved“…. from essay: Nymph Stick Insect: Observations... http://forrestgander.com/poetry

<> <> <>

A poem and some words from poet Arthur Sze:

The Shapes of Leaves by Arthur Sze

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree:

our emotions resemble leaves and alive

to their shapes we are nourished.

Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief

along the edges of a big Norway maple?

Have you winced at the orange flare

searing the curves of a curling dogwood?

I have seen from the air logged islands,

each with a network of branching gravel roads,

and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold.

I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,

a single white whooping crane in the flock.

And I have traveled along the contours

of leaves that have no name. Here

where the air is wet and the light is cool,

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,

I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,

I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

Sze said it is important to study poetry for many reasons. ~~ “Regardless of whether you go on to become a writer, all students need to understand language,” he noted, adding poetry is the most compressed and expressive writing form. “(Poets and aspiring poets) use a small number of words to create a large effect.” ~~ “Poetry asks us to slow down and experience deeply that connection to ourselves and our world.”

Writing in Mendocino with Wendy Taylor Carlisle

14 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in book awards, Lama Foundation, Poetry, Sufi, Untold, Wendy Taylor Carlisle

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I leave Saturday, July 14 for Mendocino Woodlands for our annual Sufi Retreat. This year I will have Wendy Taylor Carlisle, my favorite poetry companion, to teach the afternoon writing class with me. We have traveled together and studied the written word since the mid-1990’s. I organized a small book tour in California for her when her second, award-winning poetry book, Discount Fireworks was released in 2008. After years of reading my prose and poetry, She edited Untold. Every word. I could not have done it without her. I am lucky. She is as good an editor as she is a poet! Wendy received five Pushcart Prize Nominations, and many awards. < http://www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com/> She just moved from Texas to Eureka Springs Arkansas.

If you are coming to Mendo for the week and plan to write, you are in for a treat. If you would like to come for a day or 2 you are welcome to join the class. It goes from 4:30 until dinner in Dining-room Right. Here is a sample of Wendy’s words, a stretchy modern sonnet: Please note that the format is not exact.

THE CIRCUS OF INCONSOLABLE LOSS

There is only one ring for those sweating horses with the preternaturally

flat backs and the fat smooth rumps from which ladies

in stained tights vault onto the sawdust

or another horse.

Only one ring for the hung-over clowns and their Volkswagen,

a car so old it must be pushed into the one ring

which is also the one for the acrobats and the tigers and contortionists

and dogs that walk on their hind legs,

then stop to scratch their necks, itchy under spangled ruffs. Above them

wire walkers and trapeze guys swing,

mayfly-graceful. Under them the one ring

reminds the audience to celebrate, each in their own

constrained and special way,

the emptiness they’ve come to in the spaces where other rings should be.

–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

Wendy shows humor and skill in equal measures.

Snow White reconsiders (two versions: the first became a sonnet)

At first I knew nothing about him, imagined

his wide shoulders, his eyes dark as cloves.

My hand tightened on doorknobs;

he could be in any room. On the dining

table, the plates waited for his thumbprint,

each single knife yearned toward his grip,

I made the seven beds: I swept,

a trace of aftershave seduced a napkin.

The old woman brought me a coffin.

I bit, climbed in, was caught and paned, a kiss

galloped toward me carrying salvation.

Impact. My lashes sprung, inaction

was out of the question. The apple had been irresistible

but what woman doesn’t later regret her appetite for fruit?

An early version: After She Finds Her Prince, She Reconsiders

At first I knew nothing about you,

Tamam and Wendy in Quito…

eyes dark as cloves. My hands tightened

on doorknobs. You could be in any room.

Every table was set for you. Each decorative platter

waited for your thumb-print, every perfect cloth

lacked only a trace of your aftershave

I swept the kitchen, I made these seven beds.

Eating an apple, my eyes widened impossibly

imagining you, galloping toward me through the trees.

Wendy at Murshid Sam’s Dargah, Lama Foundation

Mirabai Starr: Book Review

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Mirabai Starr, word-dancing

≈ 1 Comment

Author Mirabai Starr will be at Open Secret Bookstore, San Rafael, CA on Monday July 9 at 7pm! Her book is: God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Mirabai Starr has some terrific one-liners. “Sorrowing and rejoicing hook you up with the God of Love.” ~ “Maybe the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one who lives inside us.”

Mirabai Starr

There is an openness here that clearly welcomes those who question life and their own path. She takes us with her into a colorful collection of narratives from her own rich experience and that of Jewish, Christian and Muslim mystics. Her work is described as interspiritual. I like that word!

In the chapter, entitled: “Toward the One: The Unity of the Divine” she quotes from Isaiah 56:7 ~ My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. But she doesn’t leave you there. “One day when I was sixteen, as I was carrying groceries from the car to the house, I had an epiphany…” I love the way she moves from the groceries to the mystical… and back to groceries. This kind of story telling keeps me turning the pages. Real people. Real stories.

In person, Mirabai’s beautiful smile welcomes and lights up the room. “Every religion is welcome in my sacred library, and no topic is dismissed as heretical.”

Near the end is “Afterward: Walking the Interspiritual Path.” In this chapter she writes: “Choose at least one religious tradition different from your own and participate in a service… When we say yes to the God of Love in an unfamiliar, and potentially uncomfortable form, locks fly off the doors of the heart, making more room for the Mystery to dwell there,” and “invent your own prayers. It is not necessary to relegate this sacred function to religious professionals.”

This is the mark of a writer who has learned to squeeze the essence from the fruit of the experience many of us share. God of Love is a passionate, honest vessel of service: “I pray that my books may be a dipper of cool water in this burning world.” Amen Sister! <> <> <>

http://mirabaistarr.com/godoflove.html

Biography: Mirabai Starr writes fiction, creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She teaches Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos and teaches and speaks widely on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss.

She has received critical acclaim for her revolutionary new translations of “Dark Night of the Soul” by 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, and “The Interior Castle” and “The Book of My Life,” by St. Teresa of Avila. Her new book is God of Love, A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Monkfish Books, 2012.

Laura Plageman wins top award for her photography

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Events, Photography Prize

≈ 2 Comments

Response to print of Green Hill, Washington, 2010

Newsflash! Laura has two photographs in the recent print issue of TRICYCLE MAGAZINE!!

Laura Plageman, my talented daughter-in-law, just won a major international photography competition. She was selected from the ten Hot Shots of 2011. The “Hey, Hot Shot!” award gives her $10,000, a solo exhibition and two years representation at the Jen Bekman Gallery in NYC.

Response #1 to Print of Thicket, 2006

I have to do the mom-brag here, because I love her work and I know how difficult it is to be recognized in the arts – especially photography. Here are some of her photos, for you to enjoy. I need to mention that exactly one week before winning this prize, she gave birth to a beautiful, delicate daughter named Maeve Clementine. What a perfect tiny being, a sister to Oona, who is going on three! Thanks to Laura and her husband Ammon, I now have two beautiful granddaughters. This is a feast of love, harmony, and beauty. I am so delighted that Laura is rewarded for her on-going creativity at a time when nursing and fussing with every-day practicalities can leave most mothers feeling far from the creative muse. A description of the work:

A fold in the print, when re-photographed, serves as a tool to deflect and distribute light, for instance. The crisp details accentuate and enhance the evident artist’s touches. The images in Plageman’s series touch upon nature and “the hand of man” in both a literal and figurative sense, while simultaneously making the elements within the picture—the documented, the fabricated, the manipulated—meld and interact with one another to create an entirely new landscape, an entirely new creation.

Response to Print of Inspiration Point, California, 2011

Laura Plageman is an artist and educator who lives and works in Oakland, CA. Her images explore the relationships between the process of image making, photographic truth and distortion, and the representation of landscape. She is interested in making pictures that examine the natural world as a scene of mystery, beauty and constant change—transformed both by human presence and by its own design. Plageman has exhibited her work in San Francisco, New York, Portland and Galway, Ireland. She earned a BA at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and an MFA from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). She has taught photography at Wesleyan.

LAURA’S WEBSITE: < http://photolp.com/>

This photograph is from a series called “Not Your Ordinary Garden Variety Plants.” It was in a show in NYC some years ago and Laura’s theme was Defiance. The weeds represent defiant vegetation, while the graffiti on the wall makes up the human counterpart. I have a print from this series on my living room wall.

May she continue to be inspired and recognized!

Response to Print of Trumpet Vine, Hawaii, 2011

Gopher in the garden!

29 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

It began under the gravel. A mound or two. Then we went away for the weekend and the gopher moved in – to the rich squash bed. It had a screen under the newly constructed, raised bed; so the gopher would have jumped in. Palden and I went out to pick some greens. A kale plant had been separated from its roots. Mounds everywhere. Uh-Oh. I had gone to Ace hardware two days before, and purchased traps. I watched some videos on You-tube. One guy showed how easy it was to pull out a “plug” of soil and reveal the 2 tunnels. How convenient. One for each gopher trap. He twisted them in a flourish and placed the trap with its jaws set in each hole, added peanut butter to pull them over to the traps and filled in the earth. Looked so easy. Next day he caught 45 gophers. Sarah at the weekend farm party had suggested juicy-fruit gum as the bait. She said wear gloves or they will smell you on the traps and ignore them. OK, Sarah, here we go.

Setting the traps was like a metal mind-bender. Even for a tec-minded person with dexterity. Have you seen those traps? You have to practice, and the metal can easily can snap on your hand. In our family, I would be the one to volunteer to empty a trap if someone else would please set it. I asked Shabda to hurry, because this enormous head was delivering dirt from the hole with no concern for my presence. Or his. Eee-ooo!

Something about women and rodents. Primal instincts. As much of a pacifist, pro-any-life person as I may be, rodents and mosquitos demand quick action. I rushed into the house and grabbed Shabda’s large, impossible-for-me-to-string, bow and a couple of arrows. I knew he was accurate. Lets just take the sucker out. It was either the gopher or the squash plants. Who knows how many rodent family menders would move in.

I wish I could say he raised the bow and shot the gopher. Clean kill. But it wasn’t that way. The gopher disappeared so we set the traps like the video said. Put in the gum. Went to bed.

I was up early and went out to look, stood nearly eye to eye with the gopher who was right by the trap. Yikes! I ran to get Shabda, the bow and some arrows. The gopher had been caught by just a leg because he was enormous. The trap was meant for smaller creatures. He needed to be put out of his misery. After a couple of tries, Shabda shot a bull’s eye (an unfortunate metaphor) right through the head and killed him instantly.

MY HERO! I carried the creature to the garbage can. Felt like about 3 lbs, at least. We have the pictures. I’m hoping to talk to my nephew-in-law, Christian. He is a policeman, and may have some better ideas of how to deal with the situation next time. You can see where I’m going with this. I Better stop and send out loving kindness to all. Meditate. Wish peaceful ness to all. <> <>

Eugene! a university, a college, and a ring

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in DJ Solomon Kahn, Eugene, Morocco, Sufi, Untold

≈ 6 Comments

Two lectures in 6 hours. Eugene, Oregon. University of Oregon, the “O” U. But first, I had to run into the store with the “O” and get my granddaughter Oona a size 3 cheerleading outfit with an “O” on the front. Oh, yes.

The university is beautiful. Brick buildings that have an East Coast flavor, except that the trees are so large and healthy, and there is the gorgeous green of Oregon everywhere. Rick Colby, Professor of Religion, teaches a large class on the Abrahamic Religions and this small class called “Women Sufis” – which he told me he really enjoys. He had invited me for tea the day before, and I was happy to be talking with this man who knew so much about Prophet Muhammad’s world and Sufism.

class on “Women Sufis”

I was to address the small class. It was a pleasure after the short bookstore talks. There was time to stretch out; discuss Khadija, Zaynab and the story of the time in 629 Prophet Muhammad withdrew from all his wives (nine probably), for twenty-nine days. I reported that this had a spiritual result, and that after the dust settled, the wives became known as the “Mothers of Islam.”

I showed pictures of Sufi Women Teachers, like Asha Greer of the Ruhaniat, and Daisy Khan, a Sufi women who heads two Muslim organizations in the USA with the aim of bringing awareness to the positive side of the activities and accomplishments of Muslim Women.

Murshida Asha Greer at Lama Foundation

Daisy Khan: Exec. Director of ASMA Society

I asked the students to tell me why they were there. After class, Rick took me to lunch at a Thai Restaurant lunch, then we met Clif Trolin, who whisked me off to Lane Community College for the afternoon lecture.

Clif is the reason I was invited to Eugene. He came to a bookstore reading I did in Santa Fe in August and said he’d like me to come to Lane. I was skeptical. I had been trying to find higher education venues that wanted to know about what was Untold, or overlooked about early Islam, but there had been little interest. So here was Clif – a philosophy teacher who teaches religions of the Middle East – taking up the challenge and making it happen. What a delight! Lane is impressive, modern, bustling with great activity. He asked Rick Colby to include me in his teaching program.

Clif Trolin & Sarah Washburn. Lane CC

Clif took me to Sarah Washburn’s class on The History of Islam, where I was to talk about “History’s Omissions, ” an opportunity to discuss Untold. So I touched on matriarchy at the time just before Islam, the question of the number of wives of Muhammad, and the legal rights he facilitated. Here Instructor Sarah Washburn filled us in about when legal rights came to Europe. Much later. That showed just how advanced early Islam was in championing opportunities for the disenfranchised, as well as for women! I read from Untold, and brought out the visuals after the hour break. The class was almost two hours long! There were some good questions after.

Zarifah Spain, a friend from many years ago, was hosting me at her house in Eugene. She had attended both talks with me and was driving me back to her place when I looked down at my hands and noticed my ring was missing. The restroom under the stairs at Lane. So we drove back. It wasn’t there. I scribbled a description on the back of a business card and placed it on the sink, where I had left the ring 5 hours before. The missing ring. This happened to be the Mariam Stone that my son Solomon’s Godfather, Todd, had found – along the Silk Route in 1976, had made into a ring and given to Joe Miller, my Spiritual Godfather.

My ring is missing….

At Solomon’s Bris Ceremony, when he was a week old, Joe gave it to me and said: “This is for Solomon.” I tried to give it to him as he reached his twenties, then thirties, but he said, “You Keep it, Mom.” After Solomon died on January 31 of this year, I started to wear it, and even talked about it at the memorial. The stone came from the formation of the Himalayas, an alchemist’s stone which allows the wearer to “keep cool under pressure and allows him to transform grave, even hopeless situations into creative and positive ones!” Now it was gone. I tried to release it, holding a thread of hope that it would return to me, but felt it was really gone and wished the finder well.

The next morning I phoned the college. Nothing. Then as I got ready to step out the door to go to the airport, and home – I got the call. A woman named Loretta at The Issue Window at Lane had seen my card on the sink and thought someone had given the ring in at her window. Yes, she had it!

Zarifa, Clif and Tamam at Lane CC

Haqiqa, who had offered me the ride, said she might just be able to make it to Lane and back before my plane took off, but it would be close. She dropped me at the airport ……and showed up with the ring just as my plane was boarding. A security guard – I had made friends with – identified Haqiqaa and rushed the piece through security, (which happened to be next to the gate) as the last passengers showed their tickets and headed for the Alaska prop-plane.

PS, This from Haqiqa today – When I arrived at the airport it was 12:47 so I thought I had missed the connection. I almost went to the post office instead. Surely a 1:10 flight had boarded already! But I parked in front of the sliding doors at Alaska Airlines, in plain view of a policeman sitting in his car a few car lengths behind me. A large sign in front of me said, No Stopping No Waiting – If You Leave Your Vehicle, You will be Cited and Towed. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the door. The sliding doors opened sooner than expected, to reveal a security officer walking toward me. He said, “You have a ring for a passenger?” and smiled, holding out his hand.
Joyful surprise! “Yes!” I gave it to him, “I’m on my way to give it to her.” I thanked him and he turned and sprinted toward Security.

“Take me with you, Mom…into your life, into what you do.” This message seemed to be from Solomon, something I wrote down the week after his death, There I was, sitting on the plane with the brown fossil set in silver on my finger again, gazing in disbelief. Gratitude, I kept thinking, all the way home through tears. Gratitude.

Alaska Airlines flight to Oakland by way of Portland, seat #13c

Ragdale, a place for writers and artists

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in Announcements, Events, Fatima, Poetry, Ragdale Residency

≈ 1 Comment

I’ve been at Ragdale Foundation residency as a writer for the last two weeks. Tomorrow I leave this succulent green view from my window in the historic Barnhouse, the quiet brick courtyard below, familiar yellow walls, the ample desk, and the comfortable bed piled with papers, for my life in California, with its warm afternoons and demands on my time.

kitchen remodel, Ragdale main house

Every night but Saturday, Linda prepares a careful meal. Last night stuffed eggplant, gluten-free biscuits (she baked), salad and a chocolate-y desert. There’s wine, for those who wish. Barbara and Allison – both artists and Brett – non-fiction writer join me for dinner, the social moment of the day. Roland was here for the first week while he put the finishing touches on the renovated main house. Howard Van Doren Shaw, the architect made this his summer home around 1900. The restoration is complete and beautiful. Writers will stay there in the coming months.

For two weeks I’ve had a routine. I write, then wrap myself against the forty-something degree chill, and walk on the prairie trails, write and eat and write. At night I choose a book from the vast library and read. Tonight it will be Mommies Who Drink, resident Brett Paesel’s funny funny book, and New and Select Poems by Gregory Orr, poems written in the seventies.

Barbara, me, Brett, Allison

Allison’s beautiful pieces light up the wall behind the 4 of us. My work has blossomed in this gentle place. Today I just sat down and wrote a poem. Straight through. An hour and fifty minutes. Usually a poem will take me all day long, in fits and starts. Me running down the stairs to print it out, then back for more revisions. Here is a sample:

Tell me darling Fatima, something about

separation. That weaning you are named for is good.

We are all homesick for before.

…The milk of knowing has nourished me.

Separation has passed through me.

I am home.

Regin Igloria - Director of Artists in Residence

There’s a strange thing about this place. Along the straight long trail, I see the roof of the hospital where I was born. I lived here 21 years after that, and haven’t been back since the early seventies. Some part of me is at home here every day. Lilies of the Valley like my mother had around the back porch, the old gas lights on Greenbay Road. Elm trees. Thank you Ragdale!