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DSC_0550E.’s grandmother is in the hospice. The head of her bed faces a small wardrobe with family photos taped to the pressed wood, and a large window that gives her a view of the tops of a few birch trees, and an expanse of sky.

We arrive just after the nurses’ aids have delivered her evening meal: a smoothie, a cream soup of some sort, and one piece of bread cut into 4 small squares, each with a dollop of a different kind of jam. But she says she has no appetite.

Remembering now, I almost write, “she sighed”. But that would be wrong. She was having trouble breathing. Speaking a single sentence was as exhausting as it would be for me to run up a steep hill as fast as possible. Or more so. Her chest rises and falls, with difficulty. And more rapidly than one would expect. Like a small bird–yes, the cliché.

She recovers slowly. Then asks about the weather. A single, careful sentence that costs her.

E. tells her that his mother had remarked earlier that afternoon that the day reminded her of apple-picking. His grandmother smiles and nods. She stares at the blue sky through the window. “An autumn day,” she says.

She has pain in her legs. In her stomach. She has trouble straightening her head on the pillow and needs to ask E. to help. To touch her on each side of her thin face and gently move it, just enough, to release a neck muscle that was gripping out of habit.

I stare at the mystery soup in the Styrofoam cup. I try to smell it, inconspicuously. But the other scents in the room are overwhelming: the mushroom smell of cleaning cloths, and spongy smell of green soap.

E. settles her head on the pillow. She closes her eyes. A few moments later she asks again, “So, it’s nice outside?”

Again, at a cost.

E. says yes.

I become aware of my feet in my too-tight dress-shoes; my hand in E.’s hand; I think about how I had commented earlier on our run, about the “bite” in the air. It had been a mindless complaint between strides.

I see now, through the window in her room, the jewel-blue sky and the cotton-ball clouds. It’s beautiful. And I want to be out there again, out in the biting wind that carries Jæren’s round/sharp smell of livestock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The last time I kept a blog, I was training for a marathon. I was making major changes in my life, at a point where people generally decide to do it, or not. Midlife crisis, they call it.

I made more changes than I had anticipated, because change never happens in isolation. But there is no such thing as a midlife crisis, really. No one can predict a midway point to any destination. There are, however, lookout points all along the way. If you take the time to pull over, get out for a minute. A rest stop.

It wasn’t the first time I had experienced a “crisis”: took on major challenges, took off into completely unfamiliar territory. It wouldn’t be the last time. Won’t be.

Things are different now, though. Now, four years after running a marathon, I’m restless again. But this time, I’m looking backward as well as forward–and no longer afraid to do that. There are practices and beliefs I’d once nourished, things I’ve dropped or forgotten, that I now understand the value of. For example, the potential for faith. All kinds of faith.

I once knew that living is dying; we should remember that fact, in order to die in a way we choose–no matter how death might take us by surprise. There is a man in Denmark who lives each day dying well. And, I hate myself for my first thought after listening to him: I need to move to a place where I can dig a pond, like he did; where I can fashion my life like his. I use the word fashion deliberately, for all it is worth. I am even considering his eccentric knit strawberry hat.

I am still there. Here. Stuck, trying to make meaningful change, to find meaning, without giving up my life and making a pilgrimage to someone else’s belief system.

Someone asked me not long ago, if I was still running. I take that as evidence I have stopped proselytising. I take that as evidence in my progress towards becoming (authentically being) what I choose to be.

I am still running. Like so many others, asking myself questions I’d stopped asking for a while.414066_359311840791185_1987797442_o-2

And telling myself that the solution is not to buy a knit strawberry hat to wear on my runs.

(Check out the mini documentaries in the links!)

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Flørli is 4,444 steps up to the top of the cliff.

4,444 steep steps. And about halfway up, someone has carved into the wood, “Now, you’re tired.”

But you have to push on. Because the alternative is going down the 4,444 steep steps, which is a frightful thought.

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So you keep moving.

There are two distinct moments in my life that I recall – where I thought realised: “Now: I am happy.”

It wasn’t on this day.

In fact, neither day was a day where I felt that I had accomplished anything. That isn’t to say there weren’t days where I was overjoyed. Proud. Happy, in my experiences.

But on these two occasions: one, quietly driving home from work, planning dinner for my two small children and my (then) husband; the other, sitting on the couch in my own apartment, my kids grown and living elsewhere, my life comfortably poised for something new – I felt a slow wave of emotion, like settling into a pool of warm water. A conscious pause, halfway up a staircase, looking around and enjoying the view, the breeze, the feeling of muscles slightly torn and strengthening. Realising that, time was not standing still. Things were good now, but they would change, and even that was a good thing. The way things are supposed to be.

This feeling is my definition of gratitude. It involves an element of submission, an acceptance and appreciation. It is lying in Savasana, palms up and open.

And it’s letting go.

It’s about letting go of contexts mostly. Definitions of myself, and definitions of my perceptions.

I have a fear of growing old. Not growing older, mind you. I am mostly fine with that. It’s the rigidness that some people take on with age. They close down on their experiences. Solve the puzzles for themselves (and, they think, everyone else). Form opinions. They stop reading the article after the author gets to a point with which they disagree. They are afraid to push themselves, to tear all those muscle fibers just a bit.

“Now, you’re tired.” It’s a taunt. Keep going. Because it is a really bad idea to stay there, resting until darkness takes you. And an even worse idea to head back down the way you came. That soreness in your legs, is just them getting stronger.

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IMG_0460Not in Utopia, –subterranean fields,–
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, — the place where, in the end,
We find our happiness, or not at all!

(Napoleon Bonaparte, 1791 – “Residence in France,” The Prelude, book 11. Found in Darrin McMahon’s Happiness: A History.)

I had been thinking about the title of this blog for a while now, and had considered “In this World”, weeks before I read the above quote from Napoleon’s essay, the essay that was ridiculed by the gatekeepers, and that possibly marked the end of his ambitions as a writer.

I’ve been thinking about blogging, or not blogging. About false starts, abandoned ideas, and ambitious reinventions. Thinking about the trope of the Great Adventure: the privilege of taking off into the wilderness to find oneself.

About what we give up, what we give.

What we take.

About narcissism, hubris, delusion.

And purpose.

About writing. Always about writing.

Excuses.

Recently, I read Alan Watts The Wisdom of Insecurity because a former student whom I admire a great deal recommended it to me. About a third of the way through, I couldn’t push from my mind the thought that I had already asked all these questions by the age of 12. About halfway through, I began to ask myself why I had stopped asking all these questions.

Part of the answer lies in the fact that I read a lot as a kid, as a teenager, and as a young adult. And, obviously, people smarter than me were asking the questions already. In fact, every idea I ever had: someone had already been there – done that.

I’ve been waiting for pre-approval for my right to speak. Waiting for the gatekeepers to invite me in. But even when they did, and they have on occasion, I’ve felt like a fraud: exposed and vulnerable.

So this is me being brave. This is me, not walking the Camino, not spending a year at an ashram, but me living the life I have chosen, with all its routines, obligations, and joys.

This is me, moving on, finding inspiration in Sondheim:

– “I’ve nothing to say, nothing that hasn’t been said before.”
– “Not by you, George.” [from Sunday in the Park with George.]