http://www.enchantmentresort.comSeptember is waning into October. My favorite time of year. And my favorite place this time of year is Enchantment Resort in Sedona. I don't remember how many years ago I first went to Sedona, but as the following story is told, perhaps you will. I was there for a "roundtable" of independent PR firms, and our host took us on an early morning, silenced hike through Boynton Canyon. The canyon was accessible publicly a mile or so back from our property, but we entered via card key in a gate at the end of Enchantment's property. We were hushed upon entrance - about 7:30 or 8AM, and walked single-file through what seemed like six different climates. As we moved back deeper into the canyon, our guide pointed at the cairns by the side of the trail. Two high, three high, ten high, more and more as we went. And as we got deeper, the trees grew higher, the light grew different, and the feeling grew stronger. This was magic. There were places I was compelled to stop. To watch the trees and light shimmering. To feel the earth energy thrumming like I had never before experienced. An hour in, about. Then, turning to go back, peaceful at first. Then the silence was shattered by laughter of people hiking in. Loud, boisterous, out of place. Offensive. And then we met up with them. Men and women in khakis and ranger hats, armed with sticks, striking and dismantling all of the cairns we had passed.
Because we were in a place of silence, we only cast anxious glances at each other on the way out. By the time we reached the gate and could talk again, our guide explained that these were forest ranger hires, paid to knock down the cairns for fear they would frighten people. It was jarring, given the beautiful journey inward.
And then, outside the gate, when we could talk, members of our group who had not accompanied us, approached and told us that the Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan had been killed in a plane crash, a month before an election he would win posthumously, beating John Ashcroft, later attorney general of the U.S.
It was a stark contrast. Peace and wonderment followed by harsh, glaring, and violent.
But, oh, the splendor and peace of the canyon. Go.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sid is Cold
Sid came into my life almost two years ago, now, on my 50th birthday, one of many spectacular gifts from my husband. Our 20 year old cat, Coffee, had succumbed earlier in the year, and now rests in a coffee jar on the shelf above the TV. Jeff had said no more cats, because he was allergic. But on the Friday evening before my birthday, I was instructed to come home early, and when I did, Jeff told me to get the dog and load her into the car. He then drove us to the shelter, where Sid waited for us, hunched down in a cage with a few other felines, a small gray Persian who had been in residence for eight weeks or so, partially because he was an adult. His name was apparent to me almost instantly: he scowled up at me with his baleful yellow eyes and any meet and greet session that had been contemplated was cut short in half a second as he twisted and clawed his way back into his cage. Sorry, Roxie, the dog meets the cat session didn't materialize either.
Shy, I thought. No worries. We brought him home and unloaded him from his carrier into the small toilet room in our master bathroom, and there I spent the next two days, on and off, trying to coax him to come close enough that I could reach him.
Since then, he has gradually warmed up, but only in a Persian way. He won't be picked up. He won't sit on my lap. But he stays close and follows me wherever I go around the house, sitting just out of reach. When I took him in for his annual check-up last week, Jeff put him into the carrier and I warned the vets to get their gloves out. Instead, he was meek and acquiesent, prompting the vets to attempt to take him in back and get rid of all of his knots.
He came back seventeen minutes later, with a "lion cut" - face, tail and boots intact,but the rest shaved. He looked mad, but mostly pathetic. Lo and behold, though, he has moved from the headboard of the bed, looking down at me each night, to the bed itself, making himself a nest and settling in to sleep on the bed. A first. After two years. And all it took, apparently, was to make him cold.
I'll keep you updated on whether that ever translates into letting himself be held.
Shy, I thought. No worries. We brought him home and unloaded him from his carrier into the small toilet room in our master bathroom, and there I spent the next two days, on and off, trying to coax him to come close enough that I could reach him.
Since then, he has gradually warmed up, but only in a Persian way. He won't be picked up. He won't sit on my lap. But he stays close and follows me wherever I go around the house, sitting just out of reach. When I took him in for his annual check-up last week, Jeff put him into the carrier and I warned the vets to get their gloves out. Instead, he was meek and acquiesent, prompting the vets to attempt to take him in back and get rid of all of his knots.
He came back seventeen minutes later, with a "lion cut" - face, tail and boots intact,but the rest shaved. He looked mad, but mostly pathetic. Lo and behold, though, he has moved from the headboard of the bed, looking down at me each night, to the bed itself, making himself a nest and settling in to sleep on the bed. A first. After two years. And all it took, apparently, was to make him cold.
I'll keep you updated on whether that ever translates into letting himself be held.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Guilt. Motivation.
Circumstances have conspired to prompt this post. Truth be told, one reason I started this blog was to re-acquaint myself with writing. Why? To recover motivation for a project that has been too long idle. The Jim project. Jim is my 93 year old father-in-law. The former head of the Journalism school at Iowa State, Jim has an award named after him that is presented to a distinguished journalist each Homecoming at Iowa State. This year's recipient is Christine Romans of CNN, if any of you watch her (financial reporter). This award has been given out for years and years, but not until Stephanie started attending ISU did we ever make it for one of the ceremonies. Shame on us. Maybe three years back, the whole family made it for the award presentation, including Jim and Toni. The recipient was Pat Dean, associate dean of journalism at USC, although she spent a lot of her life at NBC in Chicago. Her speech inspired me to interview her and many, many others about the extraordinary accomplishments of a man who would describe himself as "ordinary." My intent was a book. But after a year of interviewing him for an hour each week, and talking to many incredibly successful students of his, I've let it lie dormant. Again, shame on me. Tonight I got an email from Jim, passing on a story written by one of those students, for me to use in my writing. As if I'm doing that. Arrgghhh. Get me started!!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Other people's words
I'm a voracious reader. I devour books, and recommend only the ones that stand out for a long time after reading them. It is not at all uncommon for me to to forget a book shortly after reading it. The ones that remain in my consciousness do so because they held a resonance for me. And that resonance is not one-dimensional. I can be moved by humor, by plot, by mood, by character. Sometimes the book is summarized so well by a quotation or poem the author includes at the end, that it is what I take with me, or jot down to visit from time to time.
Sharing two of those today. The first is from The Time Traveler's Wife (a movie I haven't seen because I'm so afraid it's going to corrupt the beauty of the story). Henry and Clare's love is made stronger by the shock and disruption of a continual cycle of unexpected absence and uncertain reunion. The passage from the Oddysey quoted at the end paints the picture:
"Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sun-warmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
Her white arms round him pressed as though forever."
As though forever. Love exists outside of time, which is a miracle.
Gilead is the story of a 77 year old pastor from Iowa, who is writing a letter to his young son by his young wife. He won't be around when the boy is grown, so he wants to impart his thinking, and his philosophies. One set of passages in the book:
"There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us..."
"...Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm..."
"...There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"
I simply can't add any commentary. The words speak for themselves. Enjoy.
Sharing two of those today. The first is from The Time Traveler's Wife (a movie I haven't seen because I'm so afraid it's going to corrupt the beauty of the story). Henry and Clare's love is made stronger by the shock and disruption of a continual cycle of unexpected absence and uncertain reunion. The passage from the Oddysey quoted at the end paints the picture:
"Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sun-warmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
Her white arms round him pressed as though forever."
As though forever. Love exists outside of time, which is a miracle.
Gilead is the story of a 77 year old pastor from Iowa, who is writing a letter to his young son by his young wife. He won't be around when the boy is grown, so he wants to impart his thinking, and his philosophies. One set of passages in the book:
"There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us..."
"...Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm..."
"...There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"
I simply can't add any commentary. The words speak for themselves. Enjoy.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Do This, Don't Do That
The New York Times this morning published an article titled "Travelers' Fee Can Help Fight Disease." It described a UN program that has raised $1.2 billion over the past three years for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB through a $2 optional fee added to airline tickets sold by many prominent travel sites. Currently active in 15 countries and accounting for 7 to 10 percent of airline tickets sold, the program is now going global.
Compare that to another fee, imposed by federal lawmakers, that was the subject of a front page USA Today story last Thursday. In this case, the fee is not optional, amounts to 15% of the cost of the flight, and subsidizes 2,834 "general aviation" airports with no scheduled passnger flights - handling mostly recreational planes and corporate jets,along with frequent trips by members of Congress, according to the story. Funding was $1 billion in 2007, and funded 95% of the capital costs for the airports, as well as kicking in substantial percentages of operating costs. And a kicker: airports who receive this federal money cannot close for 20 years.
I'm sure the USA Today story could have provided better balance - at least according to the howls of outrage on the paper's web-site. But in the "do this, don't do that" category, there's no contest.
Compare that to another fee, imposed by federal lawmakers, that was the subject of a front page USA Today story last Thursday. In this case, the fee is not optional, amounts to 15% of the cost of the flight, and subsidizes 2,834 "general aviation" airports with no scheduled passnger flights - handling mostly recreational planes and corporate jets,along with frequent trips by members of Congress, according to the story. Funding was $1 billion in 2007, and funded 95% of the capital costs for the airports, as well as kicking in substantial percentages of operating costs. And a kicker: airports who receive this federal money cannot close for 20 years.
I'm sure the USA Today story could have provided better balance - at least according to the howls of outrage on the paper's web-site. But in the "do this, don't do that" category, there's no contest.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Down Here Below
I called this thing Lyric Girl, so I guess I should include some. Last week I was in the remarkable melange of humanity in New York, walking to work from the Downtown Marriott, past Ground Zero, which was jammed with trucks filled with building parts, and with (more than I expected) tourists with cameras. Presumably they had come for the anniversary of the attacks, and had stayed over the weekend to extend their trip into the next week. Up on the 41st floor of the JP Morgan Chase building where our office is, the views are spectacular, and you get that birds-eye view sense of looking down on the busy people/ants living in their world. The perspective is humbling. A different feeling from the one I get looking at the majestic Rockies and feeling oh-so small and irrelevant, but similar in the sense of feeling that as small and ant-like as we are, we are all a part of the collective. Humanity as an entity. So, then, that naturally got me singing the Steve Earle song "Down Here Below" in my head. In the song, Pale Male, the hawk is circling above Manhattan - with this narrative voice over:
Pale Male the famous redtail hawk performs wingstands high above midtown Manhattan
Circles around for one last pass over the park
Got his eye on a fat squirrel down there and a couple of pigeons
They got no place to run they got no place to hide
But Pale Male he’s cool, see ‘cause his breakfast ain’t goin’ nowhere
So he does a loop t loop for the tourists and the six o’clock news
Got him a penthouse view from the tip-top of the food chain, boys
He looks up and down on fifth ave and says “God I love this town”
Then, the chorus, really the only part of the song that's a song.
But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry
And live and die
That’s how it goes
For all we know
Down here below
Pale Male the famous redtail hawk performs wingstands high above midtown Manhattan
Circles around for one last pass over the park
Got his eye on a fat squirrel down there and a couple of pigeons
They got no place to run they got no place to hide
But Pale Male he’s cool, see ‘cause his breakfast ain’t goin’ nowhere
So he does a loop t loop for the tourists and the six o’clock news
Got him a penthouse view from the tip-top of the food chain, boys
He looks up and down on fifth ave and says “God I love this town”
Then, the chorus, really the only part of the song that's a song.
But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry
And live and die
That’s how it goes
For all we know
Down here below
The Red Book
So, how cool is it that Jung's The Red Book will be on "store shelves" next month? I, for one, buy my books from Amazon (prime), and signed up to be notified upon publication. The NYT magazine article started out eerily similar to the opening of "The People of the Book" and just got better from there. 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings? Ten years in translation? 1,000 footnotes, citing everyting from mythology to the alchemical formulation of gold? Jerry Garcia wishes his long, strange trip could have been as deep a dive into the unconscious. Or maybe he doesn't. I just can't wait to get a glimpse of what has been locked away for so many decades. It may confuse rather than illuminate the layers of the mind, but the journey promises to be rich.
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