Here I am “harvesting memories” with my two best friends, David Denny and David Levin, whom I call “The Davids”!
This is a good summer. Yes, we’ve had more than the usual awful heat that keeps us confined indoors most of the day. But that keeps me disciplined about working on my book.
Writing a memoir as an octogenarian is a wondrous task. It’s fulfilling to look back at my life, note the milestones (“every stone on the road precious to me”), revel in what I’ve “planted,” often in the midst of pain, recognize the mistakes, and correct them at least in my heart. (“If I could do that over again, I’d…”)
Above all, memoir-writing is like harvesting a garden, and the harvest is rich and abundant. “Abundance” has long been my favorite word and now becomes a summary of my life. I think of what George Bernard Shaw supposedly said about the “true joy” in life: being used for a “mighty” purpose and handing on the torch to future generations.
I feel like Martin Buber when he wrote his poem, “The Fiddler”: “Here on the world’s edge at this hour, I have wondrously settled my life.” For me, “settled” means eminently simplified.
A Simple Life
My body wakes naturally around 4 am according to its summer heat rhythm. I go out right away to walk in the “cool” of the desert morning. (This means below 90 degrees!) I have breakfast and then often swim in the marvelous pool here at our apartments.
Then I go to work on the memoir, which isn’t always writing. Sometimes it’s filing notes for future writing, reorganizing a chapter, or simply sitting fallow, allowing the next inspiration to come. The advice of Andrea Potos “When Beginning the Poem” relates well to memoir-writing.
May there be a listening
rather than a making
curiosity over expectation,
lightness and ease,
no straining…
After lunch I often nap, although some days I’m too energized to rest. Around 2 pm it’s time for errands, housekeeping, or Desert Foundation business with Fr. Dave, sometimes doctor, dentist, or other health appointments.
Life as a Landscape
Evenings are for “recreational cooking,” a major art form for me, and then either quiet reading or a good French cop show with Dave. Our best friend, David Levin, regularly comes for dinner, or the three of us go out. We’ve been friends for over fifty years! The memoir gives us opportunities for reminiscing about our life together in monastic community. It’s sometimes poignant, more often hilarious!
I find myself summing up the spirit of this season in my life in what Oliver Sacks wrote in The New York Times when he learned he had terminal cancer:
I have been lucky enough to live past 80…. I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life…. I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships… to write more… to achieve new levels of understanding and insight…. I feel a clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential.
May your lives be blessed as well.
Spirit shortens the distance between people
The inner path ultimately leads outward into oneness
the ability to hold space for one another
allows that treacherous inner journey to be taken
uncovering that which was too large to contend
but passing through time and its bringing of growth allows now the entity to embrace what from once it shrunk.
I received your current whereabouts from a Connie Bielecki. Judging from the timelines it looks as though we are current! I remember the David’s Denny and Levin, and I think that I would even recognize Levin if we were to pass in the street! And Tessa, your eyes are your passport..