FINDING TRANQUILITY

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are”  -The Talmud

View from a chair

Dearest Readers,

Recently, I listened to an American journalist in Havana assessing the mood of that country after the death of Fidel Castro. She spoke of a mix of sadness and nonchalance among those she interviewed, and the sorry state of the country’s economy. Amazingly, the interviewer shared an observation that Cuban farmers in the rural areas, despite their poverty, exuded a remarkable tranquility (her word). She left it at that without any further elaboration. Tranquility! I couldn’t remember ever hearing that word used on the news. It seeped into my brain and my bones.  

Each morning I sit in a cushioned kitchen chair for a few minutes, and stare out my

bedroom window through a patch of congealed vapor at the trees below (I’m on a hill), and at the vastness of the sky scribbled with clouds. I meditate a bit, and then I recite a decade of the rosary adjusted for my intentions of the day. A decade is a grouping of 10 beads for 10 Hail Marys, and one large bead for an Our Father and a Glory Be. I pepper the prayers with more secular words, and good wishes for my three kids, six grandkids, and future generations, with special thanks to my parents and grandparents who got me here.

 

The tranquility of being Etta

I begin my day with the pleasures of reading in bed while drinking my one half-caff coffee, feeling Etta James’ little body curled next to my legs, and in due time, rubbing her belly when she rolls over with paws curled in begging position. A good start.

 I’ve discovered that tranquility implies timelessness. Its serenity depends on patience and the willingness to bend to a situation. There’s humility and selflessness inside it too. As soon as I seek to seek tranquility a contradictory itch is released in my mind and body that strives for the goal of relaxation. This is indeed the conundrum of thinking too hard, when tranquility just is. You know it when you see it.

Being tranquil is hard to do in our speedy world. I have an advantage in this search. I’m retired, I limit my “to-do’s” and I paint when I want to. I volunteer occasionally,  see friends and find that I can voice my opinions easily.

Having the responsibility of raising kids, or a job with deadlines, driving in traffic, or being on time are not so important now-a-days. I don’t need to control so many things. My daily walks are like praying, by imbibing calmness with the sun, snow and air. Simple stuff.

Last month Becky Jensen, the director of our Peacham Library filled a display case with books on kindness and character as an antidote to the lack of civil dialog during the presidential campaign. I’m reading one of them–The Wisdom of Donkeys, by Andy Merrifield, with the subhead, Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World. He wrote it in 2006.

Andy is an x-New York City writer of newspaper and magazine opinion articles who escaped the chaos, (his description) and now lives and writes in the rural Auvergne district of France. The book recounts a summer journey he took on foot up and down the forest and village paths of that area, leading Gribouille, a gentle, soft-eyed donkey, who carried his gear. It seems donkeys are masters of the art of tranquility. You cannot force one to rush or to proceed when it senses danger. They are patient and all-suffering. Merrifield moved at Gribouille’s pace, talked to passers-by, sat with his coffee at outdoor cafes while his companion nibbled quietly near a hitching post. It was life-changing.

I have tranquility sometimes, more than in the past, but it’s not the norm. I can’t say I’ve “reached” it yet. (There’s that oxymoronical “itch” again.) Tranquility can’t be a goal, I think. It’s just is a simple state of being. Ahhhh

“The essential is invisible to the eyes.”  -the fox in Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince

ON COURAGE

Courage, Final version_2014, 6 ft x 4 ft, oil stick, ink, acrylic, charcoal and gauze

Dearest Readers,

I’m thinking about courage today, walking through the woods musing on the possible definitions–trying to find words that explain my winged representation in the painting above. Courage is one of my three large works on human goodness currently on view through November at the Gilmore Gallery in the Peacham Vermont library. Several viewers at the show’s opening reception asked for reasons why I chose the imagery of wings. I stumbled through my answers. 

Wikipedia says, "Courage (also called bravery or valor) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation." A romantic painting entitled “Godspeed!”, by Edmund Leighton (1852-1922) accompanied their definition.

Godspeed-Edmund Leighton

Courage for me is personal and entwined with the natural world. It is a pair of wings to wear in difficult times. It is a flying machine for facing death, inspired by birds and branches that reach for the sky. But this is only part of it.

Helping-Hand-Wings for Hazel Who Was Afraid of Death-21 in x 16in, ink and pastel on paper, 2003

After my mother died in 1997, I drew her a pair of imaginative wings made out of “helping hand” gloves, with velcro-fastened shoulder straps and headlights to smooth her transition from this life and beyond. I saw the fear in her eyes when the priest arrived to administer the last rights. I realized that I too wanted assistance at the end.

Cecelia at Hambidge Center with early Courage wings-Dec. 2009

Wings at Hambidge Center with shoulder straps and white "feathers"-Dec. 2009

In December 2009 during a month-long artist residency at the Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences in the North Georgia mountains, I began my painting that I now call “Courage”. It was a long time coming. I found two branches on the forest floor and mimicked their wing-like curves in ink, acrylic and charcoal. I added eyes to see in the dark and strips of painted gauze as feathers that I later changed to pure white. I sewed my own pair of silk covered shoulder straps that fit my body perfectly. I could “wear” my courage on the wall.

Courage-mid-point 2010

Later the sky in the center changed from cheerful blue to a deep and cosmic blue-green blended by hand from oil-sticks. Planets and stars dotted the universe beyond.  I slashed two angled gashes in rough red paint and created a high color focal point in the middle.

Left to Right_Sally_Cecelia_Ruth in Hambidge mirror_2009

I sent the painting a year later as a gift to an Atlanta friend, Sally Wylde in hospice in Massachusetts with breast cancer. Sally and Ruth Schowalter, friends from Decatur GA in 2009 visited me during my stay at Hambidge when the painting took shape and Sally was going through chemo and radiation. We took a selfie in my Hambidge cottage bathroom mirror. Sally is left, Ruth is right. I’m the somber one in the middle. After Sally’s death in 2010, her husband Btitt Dean gave the wings back to me.  I kept it rolled up.

In 2013 I found the courage to unfurl it on my studio wall. I ripped off one foot of “superfluous” painting on either end. This was an act of courage to potentially destroy it, but now I needed to make it less personal and more universal.

I removed the “cutesy” straps at once, and in 2014 I painted over the all-seeing eyes that felt like they were judging. There. Done!

So, what is courage?

For me it is stepping out of a comfortable space and taking the risk to move forward into the unknown, trusting in whatever the outcome brings. It is not the absence of fear. It is releasing hold of safety, and free-falling into what must be done. It is accepting help and wearing the wings.

RACING HOME

Through the empty branches the sky remains.


It is what you have.


Be earth now, and evensong.


Be the ground lying under that sky.

Be modest now, like a thing


ripened until it is real,


so that (he)* who began it all


can feel you when (he) reaches for you.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

             translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows 

Book of Hours, II 1

                                                                                     *My parentheses

Dearest Readers,

Portland to Peacham, May 2016

Driving from Portland to Peacham this Spring was a 3,100 mile cross-country race home. I was outrunning the inevitability of a limited number of years left on this planet, and feeling the need to churn out the artistic questions about this love affair I have with the trees, forests, and the Green Mountains of Vermont–my ancestral home. This is the place where my great grandparents arrived from Ireland, escaping the Potato Famine of the 1840’s and the oppressions of life under English colonial rule. Some fought in the American Civil War a decade or so later, 

Peter Fagan-16th Vermont Infantry-Grand Army of the Republic

and most are buried in the same town of Rutland Vermont where they first put down roots, raised families, and where I spent the later years of my childhood. I am grateful to them for taking the risk of immigrating to a new land and making this place their home. 

Bridget Hickey Dunn

Margaret Conlon Fagan

Patrick Fagan in Civil War uniform

Thomas Dunn

Because of the Dunns, the Conlons, the Fagans and the Hickeys, I’m sitting in my 2^nd floor bedroom scanning a vast sky over a lush green Vermont forest brimming with the inexorable creation and destruction that is the wildness of Nature.

My window view of sky above and forest  below at sunset

It is in me too. I fit into this landscape. My mind is the mind of the land interwoven with the continuous  progression of generation, growth, decline, death, decay, and regeneration. Outside my window is a cathedral. I stop, look and listen.

The Mother Hole-West Rutland Vermont 2012

If you remember, dear readers, I have in recent years burrowed myself a tunnel into the earth to satisfy my itch to claw into this Vermont-y-ness. I descended on a hand-lashed ladder, and I climbed out.

The Thinking Place-Peacham Vermont 2014-2015

More recently I fashioned a womb-like stick hut in the field outside my window. I cleared, I dug, I sawed, and wove the branches into a quiet thinking place. My friend Cynther added the leafy boughs.

Today the burrow is filled in, and the hut dismantled and rearranged into a pile of branches that has been home to hummingbirds, white throated sparrow and the ubiquitous, resourceful ground hogs.

Home is place, culture, memory, an old homestead, family, a community of friends and neighbors who help each other out, living gently and reciprocally on the land.

I call my road here in Peacham “the Hall of the Ancient Mountain Maples”. They too are weathered and stalwart. 

I feel the wind in my thinning hair. I walk and walk and walk my gnarly feet across the dark brown earth.  I turned 70 last week.