Poem (with apologies to Blake): Waiting for snow

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All of November nearly gone, and not a snowfall worth chatting about around the office water cooler. Cooled water, harumph! I want snow. We went to see the Nutcracker the other night. Lovely, you know. The dance of the snowflakes just beautiful, and the Snow King and Queen. But, harumph!

I wander around the meadow path, and all I can find is evergreen and brown. Where is the harsh winter that was promised, huh?

In my snowlust, I walked and could not get "The Tyger" out of my head, though that is about stars and tigers and the Creator and what is simultaneously terrifying and beautiful. I thought about my recovering mother-in-law and the proximity of terror and joy: almost gone, then in a day or two sprouting jokes and love. The air was cold, and I kept thinking about the tearful symmetry of snowflakes, and the dancing ones in Nutcracker, and the rhythm of my feet on the ground that was beating out rhyming, metered verse. Like this. (Seriously, my apologies to Wm. Blake for this.)

Waiting for snow

Snowflake, snowflake, come to me

down the spiral of this breeze;

where on mountains do you hide—

in Shambhala, or Telluride?

In what distant keeps or skies

swirl the centers of your eyes;

white unseen, at heights too high

for me to catch, or eat, or slide.

And your Winter, where is She,

poet Mistress of Tchaikovsky?

And when the Finns flop onto ice,

wouldn’t some for me be nice?

Where the crystals? where the drifts,

in what hollow blues my bliss?

And where does power click and fail

under avalanche and gale!

While the blizzard puffs the tree

in Anchorage and Nikiski,

Michigan wind just blows us bare:

the birds and I, we perch and stare.

Snowflakes, snowflakes on the stage,

bobbing tulle in a silver haze;

groove the dance, chill the Queen;

sift powdered sugar on these evergreens!

The Muse of Winter another year

If the ballet doesn't work,
there's always Ahmad Jamal

playing "Snowfall" at the Alhambra in London;
for something kind of cool, load the YouTube video,
turn the volume down a fair bit and listen to me read
my poem on podcast here with Jamal playing in the background.

:-)

William Blake's "The Tyger"

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Poem: Blue hour

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Blue hour

The tall spruce with wild
but silent upcurled arms
conducts the cool dark night
on a track of wind into morning’s
thinness; like God, and I lying still
under him; my moon-white face
a lit candle floating in the font
of the hot tub; the wind on my face
and arms as if prayers whispered
from a distant train; rumbling through
the entire outdoor room; the barn,
house, rocking bamboo, the hunters
asleep next door; nowhere is there
a smell of death, no deer hung,
no blood, no mouse in the mouth
of a snowy owl; this is God’s early
hour when lips are still closed, when
prayers for the dying are snored
through noses like praise out the back
door; when the doe rises on groggy
legs, believing the tender leaves
are still wet, still green.

 

We learned early Thanksgiving (Thursday) morning that my 83-year-old mother-in-law was suffering in a crisis of renal infection that had spread into her blood. It has been touch and go since then; Friday we thought we might lose her, but thanks to her medical team who made difficult decisions that saved her, and to her strength of will, she is recovering steadily, though still in ICU. This poem comes out of my morning prayers for her. "Blue Hour" — in the French "l'Heure Bleue" — called Madrugada in Spanish and Portuguese; it is the twilight between the full dark of night and the light of day. For me it is a magic hour, when occasionally dark possibilities clutch from the night, but more often my thoughts lean toward brightness and hope, toward everyday miracles in the large and small cycles of life.  

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What to do on Thanksgiving

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Take

the torch

down from the wall

and bravely wake

the sleeping giant

of your soul

Stir

dormant magnificence

out of her crouching

fraction of light

Strengthen

hibernating

hips arms and legs

into stomp

and thunder

on the dance floor of

your particular praise!

This is my daily goal, not just on Thanksgiving.

Friends around the world do not necessarily know about American Thanksgiving, how it began and why we celebrate, what we celebrate. Here's an explanation I wrote to a friend in another country. It's the traditional, happy, non-NativeAmerican view of the holiday:

Legend is that it began with the first European settlers to America. They didn't know about the New World's agriculture. The Native Americans befriended and helped them understand and raise the crops that were new to them, like corn. So when harvest time came, they had a big feast and included their new friends, celebrating together. Every year they celebrated again, and so the tradition continued. Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday in the 1860s. Since then it has become the most beloved holiday in the U.S., because there is no religious affiliation, no gifts to buy, no commerce outside of food, no complications (except family). People just gather and express thanks for what we have. Traditionally we eat a turkey, which they would have eaten in the 1600s, along with fish and other meats and vegetables like pumpkin, squash and corn. It is a beautiful idea.

BUT the truth is that the European immigrants to the New World brought the most horribly annihilating devastation to the Native Americans that it almost seems like a cruel joke that we celebrate with thanks today. (I also sent this information to my friend.) I don't know how to reconcile these two perspectives, and I don't think there is any reconciliation. I do think the day provides an opportunity to face straight on what has been done in the name of God (the Pilgrim settlers thanked God, not the Native Americans), commerce, and "progress." You can watch a powerfully honest look at the Native American view of Thanksgiving here; I warn you, it isn't pretty or happy.

So, this is what we do. We investigate our shadow and destruction. We do what we can to make it right. We wake up. As Rob Brezsny says, we can always, always be thankful for all our blessings, both the pleasurable ones, and the painful ones, because they wake us up.

Wake up, wake up, and be thankful that you are awake. Love your family and friends, love your neighbor, love your enemy, and celebrate when you stop seeing them as your enemy. Isn't that something to dance about, in wild abandon?

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"Freedom from Want": Thanksgiving and grandmothers

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What I want is not the turkey on the platter, which seems too big for the spot where Grandma is placing it. And how is she carrying it anyway? My weak wrists would never make it, and the turkey would crash onto the floor. I’d let Grandpa carry it and smile sweetly, basking in the oohs and ahs.

What I want is Grandma herself. And Grandpa. How kind and cuddly they look.

The song associated with Thanksgiving is “Over the River and Through the Woods” which continues with “. . . to Grandmother’s house we go.” I never did such a thing. The only time I went to a grandparent’s house was at the time of Grandma Olive’s death and funeral, in Bayonne, New Jersey, when I was four. I played with toy cars in the steep driveway of my grandmother’s home on the bay. That’s what I remember.

When childhood friends said their grandma died, I thought, big deal. I had no heart pocket for such a relationship.

Grandpa Reuben is the only grandparent I remember, and he was not my mom’s biological dad. He was Grandma Olive’s second husband, who happened to be the cousin of her first, my mom’s dad Sidney. Olive didn’t have to change her last name when she married Reuben. I met Grandpa Reuben twice and was in love with him, the way a girl is in love with her grandpa. He was posh in suits but intensely kind.

Is there a word for being a grandchild orphan?

It is an odd and empty feeling not to have met my grandparents. But it is even odder now to contemplate that my grandparents did not meet all of their grandchildren. Dad’s dad was 70 when he was born; he fought in the Civil War in 1865; he died when Dad was 9. Dad’s mom died in the ‘50s before I was born, the last of eight kids. Mom’s biological dad Sidney was divorced from Grandma Olive and far away when we kids came along. Grandma Olive died when I was four; maybe she held me, I don’t remember. Then there was Grandpa Reuben, a fine substitute, but once on his jostling knees and once after his stroke in a wheelchair is it for memories.

Now, I’m going to be a grandma. When I first found out our daughter was pregnant, I thought I would need advice for my new role, since I had no grandparent memories to speak of. But guess what, there seems to be a heart pocket (think cargo pants) for this relationship after all. Strangely enough, while I’m loving my unborn grandson, it's almost like I'm sitting on my own lap, feeling loved.

Note about the painting: "Freedom from Want" was one of four "propaganda" posters by Norman Rockwell inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's speech to Congress January 6, 1941, urging the country to enter World War II. Read more here.

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A walk around the farm in autumn

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It's going to be a busy week here, with Thanksgiving this Thursday. Living out in the country on this farm (it's a non-working farm, I think you know) means we can go out for a walk in nature when we need a break, into the sanctuary of the meadow and woods. I made a video slideshow of some of my photos, so come out with me and Esperanza Spalding while she sings "Ponte de Areia." We might not be digging our toes into sand on a Brazilian beach with the surf pounding in our ears, but the air is fresh and the November sun is warm. Sometimes I even discern a zephyr from across the sea.

Five and a half minutes through my little cosmos. It's best full screen.

Ponte de Areia
Esperanza Spalding
2008 Heads Up International Ltd.

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concrete poem, and alternate traditional form: family tree

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family tree

while   traveling

at the speed of a car   a particle hovers in the
passenger seat next to me      a neutrino of time and
space travel that I do not need to prove to anyone   or apologize

to the standing cows    for talking to myself like a mad scientist
who is to say he isn’t my self    a particle miracle      I go on
about my dead brother and gasp because he is not old enough
yet to hear about death    not even arrived here in this hubbled air
not having swum the arc through his mother’s arch    that opens
to the courtyard wherein the    family tree spreads limbs
on which my brother,   my father,     my mother have already

ripened and fallen in earth’s gravity    and I tell him
we don’t even know what they are

gravity    or death     or falling

but     soon    he    will
drop    and      be
caught     in
his
mother’s

ivory
hands

then

perched

and

nestled

in the

fork

of her

armpit

and

breast

his head

a plum

the crease

of his mouth open

for the galaxy of milk and I point

to the calf in the farmer’s field holding on to his mother for dear life

from the twig of her teat between the branches of her legs and say see life falls like that

Added note, from wiki: Concrete poetry or Size poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on. 

 *   *   *

11/20/11 7:22am I am reposting the poem without the shape, which may be a distraction this time. Fun to experiment (as Brendan says in his comment), but maybe this poem is better served in a traditional shape. 

family tree

while traveling at the speed of a car
a particle hovers in the passenger seat next to me
a neutrino of time and space travel
that I do not need to prove to anyone
or apologize to the standing cows
for talking to myself like a mad scientist

who is to say he isn’t my self
a particle miracle

I go on about my dead brother and gasp
because he is not old enough yet to hear about death
not even arrived here in this hubbled air
not having swum the arc through his mother’s arch
that opens to the courtyard
wherein the family tree spreads limbs
on which my brother, my father, my mother
have already ripened and fallen in earth’s gravity
and I tell him we don’t even know what they are
gravity or death or falling
but soon he will drop
and be caught in his mother’s ivory hands
then perched and nestled in the fork
of her armpit and breast
his head a plum
the crease of his mouth open
for the galaxy of milk
and I point to the calf in the farmer’s field
holding on to his mother for dear life
from the twig of her teat between the branches
of her legs and say see life falls like that

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Poem: What I don't know is

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“The intellect wants to know; the soul likes to be surprised.”

~ Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p. 233

What I don’t know is

if a tiny black druid
croons like a grasshopper
in the wood stove
of my soul, singing
summer’s tune, rubbing
witch-hazel and rosemary,
divining love's heat
from fear's icy skin. A leap
from the lines of earth,
or the lines of Keats,
their busy, bending legs
that never tire, forever.

"The poetry of earth is never dead."

~ John Keats, from “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”

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Found poem: in the face of death, despair and fear

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I took this [film] photo in the Scottish highlands

in 1980, when I was pregnant with Lesley

I heard Representative Gabby Giffords' halting voice on the radio, recorded for the audio version of her new book. She speaks, she thinks, she attaches sentences to one another (with great difficulty), though she was shot in the head only months ago in a shopping center parking lot. My friend Susie is presenting testimony before Ohio legislators today, asking them to consider, please, not allowing people to text or even use hands-free cell phones while driving, after her granddaughter was killed in August when the driver behind was on her cell phone. I am home this morning and I can't go for a walk for fear that hunters might shoot me. There are dangers all around. How to live, without fear?

As I was thinking about these things, bits of poems surfaced, as if, like whitecaps on a stormy lake, they wanted to be scooped up by the wind, and tossed together in the air. So I have strung together the bits of poems in a found poem. Please see the list of references below, which gives the titles of the poems they are from. By the way, the top lines were posted at the Rilke blog a few days ago, from a poem elegy Rilke wrote to Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, a poet who committed suicide. (Her backstory in the Russian revolution is here.)

When I get to the last lines, by William Carlos Williams, I think of life, and death, in one whole poem of his existence. This is all a mystery, how to live . . .


in the face of death, despair and fear

Waves, Marina, we are the ocean! Depths, Marina, we are the sky!

Earth, Marina, we are earth, a thousand times spring.

We are larks whose outbursts of song

fling them to the heavens.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly,

for God's sake!

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

How can you aim a fire?

The golden sheep are feeding, and

Their mouths harbour contentment;

Gladly my tongue praises

This hour scourged of dissension

By weight of their joyous fleeces.

Practical to the end,

               it is the poem

                                  of his existence

that triumphed

              finally.

(from "Elegy to Marina Tsvetayeva-Efrom (II)" by Rainer Maria Rilke)

(from "No Better Gift" by Rumi) 

(from "Lines of Winter" by Mark Strand)

(from "blue" by Cara Benson)

(from "To a Very Slow Air" by Philip Larkin) 

(from "The Sparrow" by William Carlos Williams)

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Baking banana bread

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In the caramel drop of a second about thirty minutes in, reading deeply in your chair, the oven puffs a whisper from the kitchen, you remember you have a nose, and you wonder What else have I forgotten in my body of senses? What not seen, like the attraction of the word swallow on the page; What half-heard, like the varied timbre between the hiss of burning log in the wood stove and the wheeze of rain on the gravel; What not savored, like your lip, cool and warm, against the ceramic mug before you lick it, and after; What not felt, like the broom on the floor, drunk crumbs ferried, the broom and dustpan perfectly back on the hook, the basement door clicking closed, insulating mitts on your hands holding three hundred fifty degrees of now-solid food; What have I not considered and worshipped for too long?

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Poem: A mother's breasts

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A mother's breasts

My body in the tub, candlelit,
doughy breasts shining, and
because of the baby to come
from my daughter’s body,
in this dream-light of a crone
everything is mother and baby
again, and my breasts cairns
to the memory of my children,
my daughter first, who swam to me
with her thrashing arms, and landed
a starfish hand on one white beach dune,
locked her shell-bud-mouth onto the biscuit
nipple, the soft pebble of her nose
pressed into shelter, the nipple
her doorknob into the hut—
to survive, to awaken, to trust,
to learn before the intolerable comes
with this quivering tongue, this pause
of eyes, this mouth petalled
into smile, the blue milk pooled
in the upturned keyholes at her mouth’s
curls, that this is the beginning
of life. To be kneaded
by the cupped tongue,
her eyes closed now. To be enough.
To be the bread of life.

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My personal work spaces and books

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William Blake's workroom and deathroom

painted by Frederic James Shields

"In the universe, there are things that are known,

and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”

—William Blake

Friends Brendan of Oran's Well, Hedgewitch of Verse Escape and Mark Kerstetter of The Bricoleur bared their bookshelves and journals for us to see, shone a light on their work spaces, and encouraged others to do the same. What drives us to do such a thing? Something in me wants a peek at theirs and yours, and something else in me wants to show you mine. Will you be utterly bored? Intrigued? Curious? Will you relate to my shelves a little, or not at all? Personal libraries are just that, personal, intimately personal, driven by soul and spirit in ways we can only speculate about. I love that even the ways we organize our collections reflect our personalities. That and where we sit and do what we do: read and write.

So here goes.

(I'm not showing you our collection of classic and contemporary works of literary fiction, or children's books. Maybe another time.)

I have four personal bookcases and three workspaces, but I'll show you one two workspaces. I don't use a desk, just my laptop. I don't journal much any more, as writing longhand is nearly impossible for any longer than a card or note because of carpal tunnel. I have many poetry books on my shelves at the university office as well.

Bookcase #1: Poetry 

This is one of my three study spaces: the corner of the living room,

behind a screen my Grandma Olive made, creating a makeshift private space.
The chair is old, as you can see, from my grandparents;
pen and ink with watercolor on the wall: Paris;
Navajo rug inherited from my great grandparents,
who were explorers and mountain climbers;
stack of NY Review of Books waiting to be read

Most important here:

Jane Kenyon, Rilke, and Neruda;

Cartier-Bresson from MoMA

Key here:

Volumes of my mentor: Diane Wakoski;

Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Anthologies from college

Bookcase #2 Poetry and Spirituality, mixed

This one is in the bedroom.

The Chinese fellow on the wall is practically a brother,

I love him so much; and hanging from him is a talisman

made by my friend Alek Lindus in Greece for protection;

I think of this photo (found in an antique store) and talisman

as representative of all my friends around the world

with a charmed prayer for their safety and health;
my mother's waste basket, which I remember by her desk;

my dressing table is to the right of it.

Notable here:

Pagels, Moyers, Gospel of Mary Magdalene;

much study from these books as I began to rethink

spirituality from my religious past in Baptist churches;
I don't know where Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now is,
I must have given it away.

Years of studying good poems here:

Extra poetry stack in my spare room workspace;

anything that's stacked, not in a bookcase, is being read daily or weekly;
most important here: Rumi and Dickey

Bookshelf #3: Spirituality and Paris

Notable here:

James Hillman, Jack Miles' biography of God,

Jung's Answer to Job, and my grandfather's book on astrology

Most important here:

Gurdjieff, Ken Wilber's Brief History of Everything (!),

Oxford very short introduction books on the right,
bought in the Oxford bookstore:

these two on the Celts and Quantum Theory

Getting down into the France reference books now:

Three very significant books here:

The NIV Study Bible, Rob Brezsny's Pronoia, 

perhaps my most valued book: my Plan de Paris,

a street by street map of Paris (the blue and red one)

Bookcase #4 Oversized:

Flowers, Plants, Art, History

This is the bookcase Grandma Olive picked up

secondhand somewhere in NYC and painted.

Here you go, Montag; I had this closeup photo of the painting above on file:

Notable here:

Carolyn Roehm flower books, The Way We Live,
a fabulous look at dwellings and lifestyles around the world;
Better Homes & Gardens reference book

standing up in the middle, importantly;
the "Donald" and "El Freda" mini-planters
we found at a secondhand store:
guess which of us is which?

My primary workspace:
The Red Chair

I sit here in the dark every morning, starting at 3AM.

Current stack of books read daily or weekly:

Table by the red chair with handy stack and quilting thread;

glasses of varying strength, for reading books and for quilting

Collection of postcards from museums used for bookmarks;

thread and scissors for quilting;

my Kindle

What's on the Kindle:

most notably:
War & Peace by Tolstoy,
Fermor's A Time of Gifts
Rumi's Big Red Book

Phew! Well, I wonder what you'll find interesting.

This is one of those exercises in which it's hard not to immediately focus on one's own spaces when seeing someone else's. At least that's what I found looking at Brendan's, Hedgewitch's and Mark's. Won't you join us?


Painting at top: Frederic James Shields, "William Blake’s Workroom and Deathroom," c. 1880.

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Poem: The Soul in November

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The Soul in November

How she looks I cannot say,
although the petal-less heads
of goldenrod, not flaming

yellow any longer,
are something like her
stillness

and so they must be the reason
I go out, after reading
the morning’s poems

written by others
at their desks, on typewriters,
or by hand in fine black ink,

and be with the blank
desaturated truth of them
standing alone

without any topaz,
though their sun-flares
are a visible memory.

Birds circle us
from tree to tree
in their orbit of the dun meadow.

Then I walk back to the house,
to my red chair,
the laptop, the empty

white sky of the page
and remember from scratch
my own small explosion.

Poetry should be heard.

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Bedlam: A fresh look at an old horror

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I am interested in how openly we share intimate stories of cancer, lupus, stroke, heart attack, and other physical maladies, but we are still fenced in about mental illness. Even Alzheimer’s is all right to discuss: it is a physical disease. But when it comes to mental disease, we hesitate to talk about disorders within our families, let alone personal struggles, feeling stigmatized by the mere association.

The days are still too close when people paid money to see the freak show: not bearded ladies, giants, Siamese twins or Elephant Men, but the insane. The wards of the infamous Bedlam asylum were salons for gawking, where fine ladies came to be entertained by raving lunatics.

Tom Rakewell ends up in Bedlam after a profligate life;

one painting in a series of paintings and engravings 
by William Hogarth called "The Rake's Progress"

Bedlam, now Bethlem Royal Hospital, is known as the oldest institution for mental patients (1247) and is notorious for its tortuous and dastardly treatment of patients. Remarkably, now it is a major center for research that promotes the best and most humane psychiatric practice and care. (See the history of Bedlam here.) But the word bedlam will always mean the uproar and chaos exemplified in that madhouse.

Eerily and perfectly timed for the end of Halloween week, two friends of mine have just opened an art exhibit of their Bedlam project. Robert Turney is an art photographer in the media of gelatin silver prints and wet-plate tintypes. (He happens also to be married to my professor, mentor and friend, Diane Wakoski.) Stephen Rachman is an American Studies scholar and chair of graduate studies in my department.

I really love Robert's photographs. Here is a sampling of his previous work, in gelatin silver prints.

Robert's gelatin silver prints

Rio Chama, New Mexico

Shack and Seatless Chair

Goldfield, Nevada

 New York #5

New York #9

New York #10

Robert's wet plate tintypes

And here is a sampling of Robert's more recent work, wet plate tintypes. To watch a stop motion video of Robert developing wet-plate collodian tintypes, twenty minutes shortened to two minutes, go here.

 

You know I love these two still lifes:

Moonflowers

Previously Robert and Steve collaborated on a subject happier than Bedlam: moonflowers. Robert created 10 x 10 inch gelatin silver photographs, shooting the moonflowers he grew potted in his wonderful town garden, at night. (Robert's garden is famous for certain rows of basil that went into Diane's legendary pesto with twenty-five, yes 25, cloves of garlic, that I ate with abandon, and after which Don would not sleep in the same room with me.)  Of course Robert photographed them at night, when they open. Robert's evening dance in his driveway with lights, medium format camera and moonflowers is enough to send a poet off for a week's contemplation, but combine it with Steve's gorgeous essay "Evening Glories," published with images of Robert's gelatin silver prints in the Red Cedar Review, and I am truly inspired. Below are a couple of Robert's gelatin silver moonflowers and excerpts from Steve's essay; see the twelve piece portfolio here. Read Steve's essay about Robert's moonflowers called "Evening Glories: Robert Turney's Moonflower Photographs" here:

"From 1999-2001, in this seasonal way, Turney pursued the flowers, under clouds, under stars, under the glowing coal of his cigarette. . . . It would be easy to misconstrue Turney’s moonflowers as conventionally romantic. . . . If they are romantic at all then they refer to the romance of ordinary beauty, sensuality, and sex. . . . "

~ excerpt from Steve Rachman's essay "Evening Glories"

Two of Robert Turney's gelatin silver prints of moonflowers:

"One secret of the moonflower photos lies in that Turney has photographed flowers as if they were movie stars from the 1930s and 40s. Think of Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Martha Graham rendered by Edward Steichen . . ."    ~ Stephen Rachman, from "Evening Glories"

Bedlam

So what led these two to another textual and photographic partnership, this time about the insane asylum? Robert got to talking about the tintype self portraits he was developing, and Steve began to imagine a fiction about a psychiatrist and a patient, with tintype photography as therapy! The gallery show has single rows of tintype portraits of the patient (Robert himself, acting as G.G.), separated by text written by Steve: imagined journal entries by the psychiatric doctor about his patient G.G. He brings the patient into his studio, observes him under the lens, and sees an improvement in his demeanor. As you progress around the room, the patient in the portraits evolves from a state of violent agitation to calm melancholy.

A sampling of Robert's self portraits, as asylum patient G.G., with some of Steve's journal text,
progressing from extreme agitation to almost beatific calm:

"G.G. converses rationally on most subjects often with amiable feeling and charming manners; and yet he is incapable of going among people without severe mental agitation and reflection. G. G. exhibits great terror and excitement at the prospect of crowds."

". . . And this, it occurred to me, might in the end be what the camera reveals: I have always been struck by this phenomenon in cases of insanity. The insane pose for the sane in postures of madness—or feigned sanity—much as we pose for the camera."

(This one, above, is my favorite of Robert's tintypes;

it moves me in ways I cannot describe.)

Here are two fascinating pages of Stephen's text, which are especially interesting to me, in light of our discussions about translation and poetry at the Rilke blog. I hope you can read my images of them:

I asked Robert if he found himself in any emotional distress while photographing himself as Bedlam patient G.G. "No," he said. "I just made faces." And he asked if I knew the work of Sally Mann, who photographed her children, at home, in intimate poses, sometimes naked. Yes, I did. He said, "She is the only one who could take those photographs, they are her children, in her rural home." He said that these self portraits are like that. He was not exploiting a patient in a mental hospital. He was imagining himself as one, yet thankfully (?) with emotional distance.

For me, through Robert's faces I felt the pain of mental disease, and the terrible history of ostracism and stigma surrounding it. Yet I did not feel disturbed the way I anticipated feeling at Robert and Stephen's exhibit, linking to the ghosts in my own family's history, like that shadowy hand mysteriously moving between candlesticks in Robert's tintype, above. These were after all imagined portraits and journal entries. (Before attending the show, I thought Stephen had discovered real Bedlam documents.) There was jaunty jazz playing in the background. Stephen's fictional journal entries reflected sometimes humorous aspects of the patient's world, stepping over the sacred line of treating mental illness in only morose and somber terms. This kind of open exploration and artistic imagining can help us bust down fences about the ways we may feel threatened by the topic of mental disabilities.

But no matter how painful the topic—and reality—remains, we will still have the tender melancholy of moonflowers for comfort. In the end, perhaps it is only a full frontal look at ourselves, that includes our dark shadow side, that will heal us and make us whole.

"There is one that Turney doesn’t particularly care for (because the blossom appears more like a pansy than a moonflower) but might just as easily serve as an emblem of the study. It consists of a full frontal blossom. It is the moon almost full but for a petal edge bending into a deep shadow, the moon become a flower, a flower become the moon."    ~ Stephen Rachman, from "Morning Glories"

Robert Turney and Stephen Rachman,

Bedlam art exhibit at Scene Metrospace in East Lansing, Michigan

The show opened Friday and will run until December 11.

I hope you'll forgive me for going on a little longer in an already too-long post for a blog. While I stood before one journal entry at the exhibit, in dialog with my friend Reade about my findings in the bits of research I'd done on Bedlam and how people paid money to see patients writhe in torment, I told her about William Hogarth's painting "A Rake's Progress" at the top of the post. She then told me about the opera by Igor Stravinsky (libretto by lifelong friends and collaborators, the poets W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman) of the same name, based loosely on Hogarth's paintings and engravings of Tom Rakewell whose dissolute life led to the poorhouse, and then to Bedlam. Here is another imagined Bedlam story, in which Tom cavorts in London with a bad sort of fellow, Nick Shadow, who turns out to be the Devil. It is a moralistic tale, and Rakewell ends up in Bedlam, affirming the belief held by some that "For idle hearts and hands and minds the Devil finds a work to do." Dawn Upshaw sings a lullaby, "Gently, Little Boat" as Anne Trulove, Tom's betrothed, in this touching scene toward the end of the opera.

I'm grateful that psychiatrists like James Hillman, who continued the work of Carl Jung, have encouraged us to stop moralizing about our dark side, denying or rejecting our shadow selves. I want to keep that open and eager spirit alive and working, to gently love the shadows in myself and in others, or as Hillman puts it, to see generously:

Shadow is the very stuff of the soul, the interior darkness that pulls downward out of life and keeps one in relentless connection with the underworld. . . . the shadow may be reconceived. (James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld)


. . . you find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived.” (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code)

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