Wrinkles

mesquite

Crinkles and creases that hide and reveal. 
Not only do they obscure the full picture but also present some parts of the image in strong relief, vivid and sharp.


The full picture laid out flat is a clear but one-dimensional snap-shot that cannot fully express the journey.


Take that same picture, clasp it between your hands and have at it, wadding it up into a ball until we have to look closely to see the image, parts of it displayed upon the exposed edges while other portions are hidden in the creases. 
Watch as the ball begins to expand on its own, unable to remain compressed because that is not the journey either. 
The journey is in the unfolding, the expansion, the expression gradually of all the colors and shapes always there but revealed more slowly as we observe.
Sharp mountains become worn away over time, the edge softening if we let nature take its course. As the mountains soften, the canyons fill out, spreading and widening, becoming broad and allowing trees to grow, to sink roots. 
Our entire life, the image, is a wadded up ball, a circle of spirit and body beginning the joureny. 
We have within us, as we lay in Her womb, all possibility, we are tightly curled, crumpled, wrinkled, and waiting to grow, to expand. 
If we were to see ourselves clearly, would we see the potential of our journey drawn upon our skin like an artistic masterpiece, all the colors and lines alluding to where we could go and who we might become? 
But the picture is blurry because we are small, compressed, hardly even able at first for our mountains and valleys--our strengths and our softness--to be seen. Our precise vision and gentle curves barely visible until we are born and begin living, expanding. 
Each one of us painted in perfection, and then crumpled into a ball so that we can find our own way, our own expression of love within the world, travel our own path.
I look at the painting of Self, reflecting upon the image. See the saturation of bright colors of family loving and happy on a trip; globs of black here and there when I was gone, had disappeared from sight while struggling just to survive a moment in danger. The dark slashes of deep valley where depression almost consumed me and the bright purple mountain top where I rose up and found my strength through Her wondrous gifts of animals and trees, of beauty and butterflies and blossoms in abundance.
Now in midlife, I can see the painting leveling out a bit, the image more clear through the unfolding, and connections more obvious. See the rough, smudged spots where tears have fallen and flooded the creases and run the colors onto another scene before being dried. A faded garden where too much was revealed to an intense moment that was unexpected. 
The crinkles and creases of my life are being smoothed, softened, as I open to the full image that is me and smiling at the tatters or smudges, the frenzied splotches that are not a taint upon the whole but rather reveal the mystery that is essence. The lines remain upon the image even as it continues to expand revealing a full life, the whole picture. 
The wrinkles are there to enhance the beauty of a creation that has been through all the journey and has survived.

mesquite

I can see the beauty in each line that lingers. And it is more beautiful than a painting untouched or ironed out or re-created to be completely different than how it began. 
The truth of a life well-lived and honored is in the crinkles and creases that remain ... the imperfections that are loved and embraced.

tonto

When I drove to Arizona from Maine in June 2011, I took what I thought would be a short-cut. Turning off of I-40 at Holbrook onto 77, at first it was a faster drive. I passed through Snowflake and Show Low, eager to soon arrive at our new home near Casa Grande. However, as I drove from Show Low to Globe the terrain rapidly changed and I found myself driving 25-35mph on narrow switchbacks along the mountain roads bordering the Salt River. Magnificent views! I couldn't help but stop to take pictures in spite of how tired I was after the nearly 2000-mile journey for the two dogs, five cats, and me.

Salt River Canyon

Why am I writing about this now? Because I was reminded of the splendid landscape while reading the latest of our Library Book Club's selection Filaree ~ A Novel of an American Life by Marguerite Noble. Ms. Noble was born in Arizona in 1910 and her novel is a fictional account of her mother's life in the Arizona Territory. My own travels cross-country seemed pleasant and even luxurious compared to those detailed in the book.

The first half of the novel takes place in what is now the Tonto National Forest--which is what I drove through on my way here. I will have to make another journey north this year to explore the land that Ms. Noble talks about through her protagonist Melissa; the road I drove from Globe to Show Low is south of the book's Filaree Ranch, with the Roosevelt Dam between them.

The book itself was a fast read, albeit a depressing one for the most part. Not just because of the hardships that Melissa endured, but because she didn't have any gumption (as her sister told her more than once) and could rarely find even a single moment of joy. And yet, who knows how each of us might respond to the kind of life that the author's mother experienced?

As stated in a review on the back of the book, Ms. Noble "tells her story in plain country American dialect" but there are glimpses of poetic flow as well such as

She looked at the filaree covering the yard. The rains had come generously at last, and it had responded. The land everywhere was layered with the plant and stippled with its blossoms, as if quilted in a green-and-purple fabric--a fabric fastened by the giant pins of the saguaro cactus.

Melissa also reminded me of how we often, in hindsight, see more delight in an experience once time has provided distance from the pain we experienced alongside it. She reminded me of the possibility of finding that delight right now rather than waiting for it to bubble up years or decades later. She saw her sister's joy in life, but Melissa simply couldn't reach into that space and embrace any happiness for herself. Near the end of the book, Melissa desires to return after leaving The Mesa years earlier:

Melissa lusted for the land, The Mesa land. It had been fourteen years since the wagon had taken her from that valley cradled between the Sierra Anchas and the Mazatzals. She wanted to tell Mary Belle [her daughter] about the hurting inside her, which compelled her to go back, to see the country that had taken so many years of her youth. Melissa longed to see Shug [her sister], to hear her laughter, to feel her love of life, her warmth, her caring, the support of her strength. She wanted again to see the distant jagged peaks, the endless sky, to touch again the broad flat earth cut by Tonto Creek, to walk in the country she had pushed from her thoughts for so many years.

All in all, I'm not sure I would recommend this book to everyone because I found it depressing and frustrating for the first half to three-quarters of reading. On the other hand, the details it contains of a woman's life 'out West' at the turn of the century are remarkable. As with everything else I've experienced and seen this past year, there are treasures and joy everywhere, in unexpected nooks and crannies.

rare

Every few weeks, we have the rare cloudy day or two...
As I thought of the slender green-skinned limbs of the Palo Verde
dancing in the breeze I suddenly saw them morph into the
Orion women of Star Trek fame, seductive and irresistible...

a holiness that dwells and dreams

... Informed by the logic of our creaturely senses, the story gestures toward a great secret: that there’s a blazing luminosity that resides at the heart of the earth. The tale suggests that the salutary goodness of light makes its primary home within the density and darkness of matter. That the transcendent, life-giving radiance that daily reaches down to us from the celestial heights also reaches up to us from far below the ground. That there’s a Holiness that dwells and dreams at the very center of the earth. ~ David Abram, Becoming Animal-An Earthly Cosmology

Nonetheless, the older, more primordial style of prayer sustains a very different stance toward the local terrain than that which resolutely directs itself toward a divinity beyond the world. While the latter feels the sensuous landscape as a finite and restricted realm relative to its transcendent source, the first experiences the sensible world as the source of itself--as a kind of ongoing transcendence wherein each sensible thing is steadily bodying forth its own active creativity and sentience. ~ David Abram, Becoming Animal-An Earthly Cosmology