Truth and Beauty, With Apologies to Ann Patchett
I stole her book title for my last post of the year – because it captures the 51 posts before it.
We’re whizzing down I-95 on Christmas Day, no traffic jams to slow us down. Tom Petty is belting out “I’m learning to fly…but I ain’t got wings.” I look over at my husband singing along and I see how much the music moves him. It makes him feel alive. I find myself telling him to listen to that feeling – it’s his gut letting him know what he needs to thrive: music.
It's like beauty for me. I’m filled with a profound contentment as I witness the grace of a flower turning from bud to bloom; as I stand outside wrapped in the aura of twilight or the cocoon of morning fog; as I find myself blessed with the company of dragonflies or entertained by a family of crows. The woods are my cathedral; walks are my prayer. In nature, I experience beauty and spirit at the same time, and I feel whole.
How can I be so sure of this? How do I even know I need this healing – or what I’m healing from? Because I’ve written it down! And in the journey from my head to my hands to the keyboard, there’s been translation and analysis and revelation. The thing about committing to writing 52 personal essays in a year is that you’re practically guaranteed clarity about what’s on your mind, even if you had no idea what that was when you started.
How lucky I am to have this therapeutic practice. To be able to tell stories and find truth at the same time. And to have them resonate with you – to help nudge you into listening to your gut and finding your own path to serenity.
Since I happened to move over to Substack at the beginning of January, I had a whole calendar year of posts to look back on this week. In examining the essays, I could see which fell out of me most effortlessly – and which of those intersected with your concerns and desires.
What I saw was this: It’s all very well and good for me to talk about beauty and serenity, but without the opposition – the darkness, the loss, the confusion, the chaos – grace and goodness can’t find traction. I can’t help you feel optimistic about brighter days unless you know I’ve seen the dark ones. When you feel in your heart that a writer has experienced lows (and highs) like you have, you are all in. Which means I have to go down to the places where I’m afraid or disappointed or experiencing loss in order to reach some part of you.
Who am I to say growing flowers will make you happy? I can only say that in sobriety, I have found that my anxiety (formerly soothed with alcohol) is greatly reduced by working outside and by engaging with beautiful living things. That doesn’t mean this practice will work for everyone, but at least I’ve put it in the context of where I was and where I am (or where I strive to be).
I find that I often begin an essay telling a story, not necessarily knowing where it will go. Then, by the last sentence, I find myself at this previously unknown destination with a helpful rearview mirror showing me where I’ve been and why. Of course, sometimes I get to the end of the story without any great revelation. It just means I haven’t arrived at my destination yet. That’s for another day.
In curating some of this year’s essays – the ones that resonated with you – I paired the first and last paragraphs to see where I started and where I went. Here's a quick look at a few of those. You will notice that explorations of home and relationships filtered through the screen of beauty, nature, flowers, and serenity.
My Vineyard
My Island home is so very different from the Martha's Vineyard others see.
My Vineyard smells like new hay and tastes like a ripe Sungold tomato. It looks like a fiery field of orange butterfly weed and feels like a soft carpet of pine needles.
Like a child’s drawing, my Vineyard is populated by farm animals – sheep and goats, hens and chicks. Cattle and oxen, too. And wild things. A whole Watership Down of bunnies and a flash of white tails from bucks whizzing through the woods. Skunk kits hide in the hedgerows, hawks play sentry atop the tallest pines, and a pair of otters pop up in Bliss Pond…
… I know I’m just like all washashores. We get here and decide the place should stand still in time. Guilty as charged. But I’m not worried about me – I have my Vineyard in my heart and it can never be taken away from me, even if someday we move to Delaware if it gets too expensive to live here. I just hope there is always room here for everyone who craves a different kind of life. It is a life worth passing along.
Loving and Losing Colleagues
To my co-workers, past and present. And flowers for Dan.
I know, I know, it’s June and the days are long and light, and I have flowers to cut and an old dog’s tummy to scratch. So I should be joyful. But I have been traveling down a dimly lit road this week, and I feel I should forewarn you. There is a neon sign (albeit with a few bulbs missing) at the end of the road, though, I promise…
…I realize now that what I’m feeling about Dan isn’t just sadness – it’s my heart expanding and filling up my chest and squeezing a bit of the breath out of me. You can’t have mourning or grief without love and gratitude, too.
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
Navigating the seasonal dip, the medical system, and the space between my ears
Monday night I walked by myself, long and strong and fast. On the bike path, through the State Forest, towards Nat’s Farm Field. Earbuds in, Jackson Browne on. Brain moving through and around the music, trying to grab onto notes. Rain coming, first only in the shape of lumpy clouds on the horizon, then in penny drops. Finally in nickels and quarters, shiny splats and splotches on the blacktop beneath my whirling feet. I tried to sing out loud. I swung my arms up and around, stretched my back, let the raindrops collect on my eyelashes so I could blink them away. I could feel the walking endorphins struggling to lift me up while the grey curtains of early darkness came down…
... I got caught in the rain again on Thursday. It’s a thing, now. It’s okay. The endorphins don’t melt in the rain.
As the sun sets earlier and earlier, there’s one more change I’ve got to make: I have to go to bed earlier and get up earlier so I can grab all the sunlight I can before I sit down at my desk. Fussing around in the garden in the sunshine – or even on a semi-sunny day — is still the quickest way I know to improve my mood. And it doesn’t matter if I do anything fancy with the flowers when I harvest them. Bringing all that color and life inside is an antidote to the darkness.
I Finally Get It: Beauty Is What My Soul Seeks
A dead Irish poet came knocking with the truth.
I didn’t mean to pick the flowers, to make up that little posey. It just happened. It was evening, and I was doing chores – watering, dead-heading, picking pole beans, reining in errant sweet pea vines with my handy spool of twine. But no harvesting tonight, I had told myself, cramming my clippers into my apron to dampen the temptation…
…I’ve had a minor revelation this week. Actually, not so minor… a realization of something I must have always known innately but never had the words or the power to articulate or process. I learned that our experience with beauty is not a conversation with our brain, but an interaction with our soul.
The Dragonfly Messengers
Change is coming, but I'm not frightened.
The dragonflies did not appear until I arrived at my thin place.
It was a long, steady, hot walk, broken up only by gauzy veils of fresh spider webs and scratchy raspberry canes and decaying piles of horse poop. The path through the woods is nearly obliterated now by the overgrown understory, but my feet know where the trip-you-up roots are and where the poison ivy creeps. These I can sidestep, but the unseen is still the unknown and I can count on a tick or two riding home with me every time, hitchhiking without my permission or knowledge.
I see so much more on my walks now than I ever did before, but what I don’t see, can’t see, interests me almost as much…
…I know that change is coming; I know there is truth and knowledge in nature that is just outside the realm of my consciousness. I also know that nature doesn’t have all the answers. But when I see a dozen different kinds of mushrooms pop up in our backyard practically overnight I know there is a level of intelligence and communication and symbiosis in nature that is far greater than any capabilities I have. Humans are highly evolved – and our capacity to feel love is perhaps worth everything — but I wonder if we’d be better off if we hadn’t left some other traits behind during our evolution.
Pat the Moss
Or perhaps lie down on it, as if it were a rug by the fire.
It is a blue noon, sandwiched between the greys of morning and afternoon. The sky, I mean. So persistently cloud-covered, so unforgivingly steeled against any errant ray of sunshine. March is like the Tin Man, looking for the heart of spring. Like Dorothy, I am waiting for the black and white to change to color…
…It is a miracle that I get back to my desk without an hour passing by. As I go inside, the sky greys up again, the temperature drops, and somewhere out there Dorothy and Toto are needing to get out of the storm. They’ve got a lot of bad stuff to go through and I worry for them. But they’ll get to the part where the film changes to color – and then best of all, discover where home really is.
Angels Among Us
— the ones who never leave our side and the ones that come and go, staying just long enough to help us through a bad time.
I’m not necessarily saying there are actual angels among us – you know, the kind of angels sent straight from God as a spiritual go-between. I’m just saying it’s a little strange that when we most need it, people show up, carry us along, and sometimes then depart, never to be seen again. Others stay by our side forever…
…They weren’t the last either. Looking back, I see angels who surrounded me when I got to the Vineyard, angels who got me through high school and college and New York, angels I work with now. And of course angels who came and never went.
I’m not sure how it works, but I’m a believer.
The Ghostess of Christmas Past
Unpacking my mother from a box of wooden Santas.
I open a box of Christmas decorations and my mother pops out. I throw the lid back on the box, but it’s too late. I’ve let the genie out of the bottle. She – and my complicated relationship with her – is right here…
…I think this is why the holidays are so emotional for all of us – we are simultaneously reminded of love and hurt, of desire and disappointment, of our generous impulses and our inevitable limitations. It is a relief when the genie goes back in the bottle – and the Santas go back in the box.
Why Would You Want to Live on An Island?
For me, the answer to the question of 'Why Martha's Vineyard?' lies in my heart, not in my head.
She asked the question with no judgment, I really believe.
Did I hear her say, “Who would want to live on an Island?” No. Did I hear her say “Why would you want to live on an Island?” Not really. Did I hear her say, “What made you want to live on an Island?” Yes, I think that’s what I heard, what she meant…Slowly it dawned on me that she was actually posing the question to herself: How would she feel about living year-round in a place seven miles out to sea (with no malls, no fast food, no Starbucks, no stoplights … no easy access to family)…
…It is not easy to find your comfort zone in this life, or to acknowledge what you need to survive. But it is worth the search, even if it is hard to describe what you’ve got when you get there.
🦉
I love this so much, Susie. Just this morning, I started an essay explaining that while I often write about dark, difficult things, I personally experience those and know those as contained within a whole and contained within Love. Writing changes my experience of darkness; writing changes my experience of ME. And, similar to you, I often have no idea where a particular essay will end up or what it will reveal when I start it.
“The woods are my cathedral; walks are my prayer. In nature, I experience beauty and spirit at the same time, and I feel whole.”
I feel this too, yes. Forest bathing is where I find peace. That is my church, too.
Thanks 🙏🏼