1. Today was an especially uplifting day in the world of this blog because of responses people wrote, comments they made, and emails I received. Upon reading about my monthly blood draw, Marcia Morgan Jacobs asked me if I would consent to a transplant during the pandemic. Answering Marcia helped me review discussions I've had with the transplant team and with my Kootenai Health nephrologist, all of whom agree that as long as my condition remains stable and as long as I feel so good, I should feel free to turn down the offer of an organ -- unless, God forbid, it's a young, nearly pristine organ.
But even in that case, right now, when I think rationally about a transplant, I might very likely turn down an organ. Even if the people at Providence Sacred Heart are taking every precaution they can to keep the hospital safe and even if I were individually protected with high quality gear on my body, I'd be out and about a lot with my immune system mightily suppressed. Upon release from the hospital, I'd have to make frequent visits back to the hospital for lab work and check-ups. I'd either be staying in Spokane somewhere or commuting back and forth from Kellogg and, in my compromised condition, I'd be way more vulnerable to the virus than I already am as a person over sixty-five.
I enjoyed taking some time to think this through and respond to Marcia.
2. I also heard from Linda Lavigne, Liz Moudy, Roberta Garner, and Deborah Gridley. They have all loved reading Pillars of the Earth. Their comments heartened me to get going soon on reading this book, even as its thickness looks daunting, but, as I've said, kind of perfect for all the time I'm spending indoors.
I also loved hearing from Linda Lawrence Hunt.
I spent much of the day remembering my days at Whitworth as a student and colleague of her husband, Professor Jim Hunt and as a friend of Linda and Jim's. For just over two years, starting in September of 1976, my first wife and I rented a cottage that was right next to Jim and Linda's house. We got to see and talk with each other often. All day today I dipped into the bounty of warm memories I hold of those times living next to Jim and Linda back then.
Linda's comment, though, was a response to my writing about Theodore Roethke.
Linda told me that Jim loves this line from Roethke's poem, "The Far Field": "What I love is near at hand" and that it's been helpful for her as she's experienced three bouts with cancer.
I realized that it had been years since I'd read "The Far Field".
So I read it again.
Like Roethke's poem, "The Rose", which I commented on yesterday, "The Far Field" is another of Roethke's poems that comprise his "North American Sequence".
Like "The Rose", "The Far Field" is a somewhat long poem. I wanted to understand better the line that Jim loves and that has been so helpful to Linda. Here's the entirety of the verse that line appears in:
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is always at hand,
Always, in earth and air.
I don't know if it's a common experience, but I know that my brushes with death and that living with a chronic disease have sharpened my love and appreciation of the beauty I live within, the beauty in earth and air. In this way, I, too, am "renewed by death, thought of my death" and am buoyed by knowing that whether it's the rush of Coal Creek, the Shasta daisies blooming in our back yard, or the sparkle and shimmering of a North Idaho mountain lake, "What I love is always at hand."
The verse I quoted from "The Far Field" comes at the end of this poem's third section; in the fourth and final section of the poem, Roethke sums up the what makes the things of this world so renewing, so transforming, so joyous when he writes, "All finite things reveal infinitude".
Buddha might rephrase this line slightly and say that the only permanence is impermanence.
When I read this line of Roethke and when I reflect upon his insight that "What I love is always at hand", I realize that I experience the spirit of life, the sustenance of life, and the forces in life that are infinite in the finiteness all around me. All this finiteness will pass one day: Gibbs, friends and family, that stack of poetry books that arrived in the mail today, the scent of thriving foliage along the once dead and gray CdA River, the smell of cedar in the Settlers Grove, the way Placer Creek tumbles over fallen logs near the Pulaski Trail, the waves thundering and leaping over the rocks at Otter Beach along the Oregon coast, and much more. But in this brief time I have to love what I will lose, I experience mysteries and joys beyond my understanding, experiences that invite me to experience what is everlasting and nourishes my spirit.
I don't know if what I've written here connects with what Linda Hunt has experienced, connects with why Roethke's line "What I love is always at hand" has been helpful to her.
But, Linda's comment revved up my thoughts and memories and more of them are churning as I bring this short bit of writing to an end....Richard Wilbur's poem, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" .... Wallace Stevens' line from "Sunday Morning", "Death is the mother of beauty".... Gerard Manley Hopkins..."The world is charged with the grandeur of God".....Denise Levertov's "O Taste and See". . . but enough riffing.
Let's move on to #3.
3. A while back, Paul bolted a free standing bookshelf Mom left behind into one of our basement walls and we are using it for food and kitchen wares. It's a part of our basement pantry. Having this space to store things has inspired Debbie and me to do some rearranging in the kitchen and I pitched in today by dealing with our numerous quart containers of flour, hot cereal, dry beans, grains, sugar, and other items by organizing them in the rotating cabinet below the kitchen counter to the right of our stove/oven and moving other items to the basement.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
If you think back to jobs that were payin'!
Some weren’t that much fun I am sayin’.
Lots were dirty and hot,
And you weren’t paid a lot.
But for future was foundation layin’!
No comments:
Post a Comment