Home, Again

The final few days of the Atlanta visit were too crowded to find time to write here. Though the other events (there were eight scheduled in all, over a four day period) were hits and misses. Borders bookstore forgot to schedule, despite two confirming phone calls, and an independent book store there didn't get it in its newsletter, so not much happened either. Plus, one of the events that was scheduled at the very last minute went out to only ten people via email and attracted no one. So, of the eight events, five of them actually happened! On the other hand, those five were wonderful. Each discussion had its own flavor, though all tended to be deeply personal and intimate, since each group contained participants who were working with fresh, raw grief.

The radio show, an hour-long interview, was really fun. I've always loved radio, as the most intimate medium. In fact, I cohosted a weekly call-in show back in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1977 I think it was. We called it "Just Between Us," and the way we'd approach the evening was to drive out in the Idaho desert about an hour beforehand and get stoned. She'd bring the car, I'd bring the joint. Then, we'd starting talking about something deeply meaningful to us as women, drive back to the station, sit in our seats with headphones on, greet the technical guy, and keep on talking. We had a small, but fiercely loyal audience. Then came our Waterloo, when we decided to research the history of Easter, and put on a show about its origins. Well, little did we know that we were going to discover the Easter comes from oestrus, relating to estrus, eggs, fertility, menstruation and so on, with pagan connotations! We bravely brought all this info to the show, and well, that was too much for Twin Falls of that era, a town in which social organizations were all based on organized religions, and our radio show was summarily shut down. Anyway, the interview in Atlanta will become a podcast soon, and I'll figure out how to tell you how to listen to it, if you're interested.

Though I no longer need marijuana to fuel my conversations, I still love radio and find it very congenial to my particular personality and voice.

This is my last post until the next trip, which starts on July 25.

Initiation

June 10,2006. Yesterday's trip from Bowling Green to Atlanta found me stranded along with hundreds (thousands?) of other vehicles as we inched down four miles to the bottom of a steep mountain pass. (One and one half hours worth of inching.) Truckers passed the word that what lay at the bottom was a wreck with four people dead. I heard later that the accident had occurred early in the morning. I arrived around 2 pm and took my place in line, inching, stopping, inching. I could feel an energetic field surrounding the entire long three-lane wide ribbon of vehicles. People inside their cars did not look angry, or frustrated. Instead, thoughtful. As if we knew we were in the presence of mystery, as four souls swam around in the air, disoriented, confused by their new status. As if, now that we were all stopped, in line, with nowhere to go, nothing to do, we had given ourselves permission to bathe in this rare time of just breathing, inching, stopping, breathing, inching towards the bottom of the event that trailed its vast meaning that broke the surface of daily busyness back up the hill.

Today, at the book first event, at Cedar Hill, near Gainesville, Georgia, 30 women and one man came together in circle to listen as I read from the book and shared other stories from my life with Jeff and during the year after when his presence was deeply felt--and heard from others who also shared their similar experiences with loved ones passing. One woman whose teenage son died in her arms--and though people called and emailed her afterwards, they wouldn't meet her eyes. Another whose teenage son was "a bad boy" in society's eyes, and when he died she was shunned by society, and even lost her job. And she too, she said, was feeling about herself the way society was feeling about her, and all of a sudden she realized that what she was feeling from them actually originated within her, and she had a sudden awakening, the most powerful of her life. Since then she has learned holotropic breath work and works with people in grief to actually attune to their bodies and their feelings and to use the breath to help move grief out.

We spent quite a bit of our two hours together talking about howling, keening, what the body wants to do and has been forbidden by our society. Speculated that this attitude towards the unseemliness of natural processes that the body needs to undergo when experiencing great loss probably came over with the puritans, since we don't remember a time when it has not been there, despite the fact that we see Iraqi widows grieving loudly for their dead on the daily news.

One beautiful Hawaiian woman had just completed a PBS special on the experiences of four people as they moved towards death. Can't remember the name of it, but it took ten years to film. She traded me a book for the film, so I will find out.

Bowling Green, Ohio, learning over counter

7/9/07. This is the second time I've tried to post today, each time leaning over the counter at the Best Value motel in Bowling Green, Kentucky, since my computer weirdly won't load up the internet despite it saying it's connected.

Just discovered that one of my venues in Wyoming may have to change due to a grave illness in the family. Another one feels tentative, due to the person's iffy health situation. How many of us are working with relatives and friends who are gravely ill, and how much has this to do with the environment? Sometimes it feels like we're in a novel about the end of the world.

And yet, just about every glance with a stranger feels friendly, open. As if, were we but to stop and talk, we would find ourselves the same. Each time that flash of recognition occurs, I feel an expansion of being, a lightness. Gratitute for the privilege of being alive at this crucial turning.

Initial Difficulties

6/8/07 Got up this morning and forgot how to get into my blog. Feel like a foolish old lady. But, everything's packed, taking 70 books with me and even ironed a few pieces of "good" clothing to be presentable in Atlanta. Reminded me of ironing sheets, pillowcases and handkerchiefs (remember them?) as a kid. Surprised we haven't invited throwaway sheets and pillowcases to go along with kleenex. Glad that I decided to stop along the way overnight (used Priceline for best motel price,
$38), and have earmarked Mammoth Cave as today's destination. Have never been there, and the last tour is at 4:15 p.m. My kitties know I'm going and are NOT pleased.