Falling

One thing you never have to concern yourself with if you subscribe to my blog is the possibility of my filling up your inbox. It’s been awhile since my last blog. If I don’t have something that I suspect is worth your time to read, I don’t write. But last night, an incident presented me with material.

I run at night – because that is when I have time and because I am a night hawk and am most active at night. The downside of this predisposition is that it is dark and every now and then, I toe into a small rise of some sort – broken blacktop, bad seam, or poor paving and meet the road with various parts of my anatomy. Last night was one of those, and though overall not as bad as some, it did leave a long split of skin for which my dear husband matched the edges back together and secured with “butterflies.” The wait for healing begins. I mention this not for sympathy because I played a role in this scenario by not paying attention. Earlier in the run a motorist had been rude and threatening, and I was still, in my mind, back there. Just as I said to myself, “That’s enough Christina, leave it,” I hit the rise in the road and down I went.

My life has been about asking questions, many of which sought to understand the nature of this mind we’ve been endowed with, using the modern idiom—an extraordinary piece of technology—which routinely had us in one location, in our mind, while our physical body is someplace else doing something else, most often without our awareness of this fact. Sure I knew I was on the road. Sure I knew I was running, BUT not in any of those precise moments when I was rendering my irritation over yet another angry, careless driver. We would swear we are aware of both at the same time. The brain fools us because its speed is phenomenal. It jumps back and forth between, in this case, my attention to the road and the conversation in my head that I was having with the driver long gone. Our awareness is generally not developed enough to notice when our minds make the jump from where we are physically to a scenario in our minds. We truly believe we can “multi-task.” It just isn’t so. In that blink of the jump from my attention on the road to the rant in my head, life could have ended, depending on the circumstances. Fortunately, for me, this time I’m merely incapacitated.

I have spent a lifetime studying this phenomenon where we are one place in our mind at the same time as being another place with our bodies. People can go through their entire lives without realizing that their present reactions or emotions in no way reflect their present environment. The best modern day example is people talking on the phone while driving. Their attention can be miles away depending on the conversation, even decades away, and we’ve all noted at one time or another how that effects what they are actually involved with – operating a car.

The growing interest in mindfulness is a heartening indication that more and more people are beginning to realize how much of their actual lives they miss by spending it in endless conversations in their head. We can change this as the practice of mindfulness can show us.  I have spent many years working to silence that otherwise seeming endless conversation that so robs us of lives

that we could have, ones where our awareness is involved with the actual moment we are living. Obviously, I still have work to do, but

I’ve had a taste of that delicious freedom that accrues to us when the mind is still, and that is why I sat this morning feeling a deep sense of rapport with Mary Oliver and her sense of wistfulness when she says in the last half of her poem “Blue Iris”:

“What’s that you’re doing?”        whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window. 

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring silver face.

It doesn’t happen all of a sudden you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

An Autograph

I’ve never been a hero-worshipper or found myself in throngs of squealing fans enthralled with some new star. It wasn’t that I didn’t want heroes; I think it was just having a few too many disappointments rather early on. So imagine my chagrin when I found myself thrilled to receive an autographed copy of a Mary Oliver book for Christmas. I actually gasped. There on the inside cover, right in the middle of the page in black ink from the medium-fine nib of a fountain pen was her name. No fancy script, no curls or flourishes, just basic cursive, completely readable with a dot over the “i” that ran a little to the right, and then a period after the name as if it were the end of a sentence.  

 I ran my finger across it, slowly, then jumping the gap, I tapped the period. That’s probably as close to Ms. Oliver as I’ll ever get, but it was something, a meeting of sorts, creating substance in that book that went beyond that of her discerning thoughts and penetrating observations.

It has been a treasure to live in her time, share the world she’s seen and experienced. Her poetry and her prose never cease to leave a sustained impression for she is real. Art of the highest caliber takes more than a talent that one is willing to raise to its most skillful level. Art also requires that an artist not back away from life, that they face whatever is dished up to them and stay with it alert, engaged even when the demons howl. Mary Oliver has known blistering poverty, illness, the loss of one she loved for over 40 years and sundry other challenges that rocked her life. But she persisted and remained open and intimate with the world around her.  Emerson once said, “…we only believe as deep as we live.” It is Mary Oliver’s gift to us that she has lived so deeply.

What follows are excerpts from the book she wrote after the loss of Molly Malone Cook, entitled Thirst:

‘When Roses Speak, I Pay Attention’

…And they went on. “Listen,

the heart-shackles are not, as you think,

death, illness, pain,

unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, selfishness.”

The fragrance all the while rising

from their blind bodies, making me spin with joy.

‘A Pretty Song’

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence to

all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

‘Praying’

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones;

Just pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence into which
another voice may speak.

Is it no wonder I would like to be closer to her? But if it is just occasionally running my finger across her name left from her pen in my book, I will be grateful for even that proximity to a being who so astonishes me.

Sharing the Gift of Love

A Christmas gift suggestion

This is the time of year when so many people, events and tasks clamor for our attention that I feel almost apologetic for adding one more, but you can sense already, can’t you, that I am going to anyway. Why? Because this is the holiday season more devoted to love and loving kindness than any other we have. To that end, retaining love as our foremost consideration, I suggest for those on your Christmas list a love story you and they may have missed. It is a profound love story, not just about the love of spouse for spouse, parent for child or friend for friend, but a love that asks even more. A young Black woman, illiterate, yet discerning and witty accepts a behest from her mother, one that has kept her lineage alive through centuries of trials and suffering. The behest: To love the world – no exceptions. Miss Imogene assumes this responsibility through the politically divisive, racially charged 20^th century, with nothing other than a deep faith in goodness, the ear of her dear friend and cart horse, Polly, and an inner strength which she comes to know only through her trials.

Reviewer Patricia Macvaugh described what drew her into the story: “…I was compelled to see if loving the world, that world of hate and ugly racism, was truly possible.” And her conclusion: “I hope to channel Mrs. Imogene Ware as I walk through this world of ignorance, terrorism of all kinds, and cruelty to Mother Earth. It isn't easy, but she [Miss Imogene] never said it would be.”

There is always another way; there always is. That is my raison d‘etre for being a novelist, to offer such stories. This Christmas you can make the gift of love tangible by sharing this novel set with those you love easily as well as those who challenge you. It is a compelling story of a lone Black woman attempting to contend with the life destiny bestowed on her through where and to whom she was born – while struggling to save and salvage the lives of others, especially one particular white child originally in her care.

Accidentsof Birth – Books One & Two

Available in Paperback or Kindle Format from Amazon

The Ultimate Thanksgiving - The Opportunity to Live a Life on Earth

How many of the billions of inhabitants of this planet have any idea how rare it is to have been born here as a human being? Do I? Do you? Do we sense or even know what we are capable of. Move past technology. That’s child’s play compared to the nature of life lived from our own individual stashes of  conscious intelligence that permit us to choose past instincts, beyond our DNA, to touch the eternal while woven into a fabric of daily life and trials. How many of us use this chance to explore our real nature, to employ this moment to exceed the limits of habit and name and gender and old stories? A trail head to this worldly journey, which turns us within, is our willingness to accept this earthly experience as it is… period… without judgment… so that the roll of the dice that put us here we will count as a win and know, as we’ve never quite known, what we have to be thankful for and why.

Let a king of poetry, W.S. Merwin give you a sense of it in his poem “Thanks”

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is.

Why I Write – Revisited

It was one of those mornings where when I started my morning pages, I did so in the shadow of doubt once again. I asked for the umpteenth time, will I ever find a community of people who read what I write? I’ve had this conundrum going for a while asking: If my life is truly committed to awareness of the reality of self as lived on this planet, why do I care if my books are read or not? Is there a lie in there that I’m unwilling to own? My morning pages offered a place to investigate that question once again: Why do I write?

Quite clearly it came to me that I do not write out of a desire for success, meaning sales, or I would have packed it in a while back. Nor am I seeking recognition. I’m not one who requires kudos to keep going with something I’ve chosen to do. Though feedback is pleasurable and appreciated, being a judicious person by nature, I feel capable of assessing my work. As well, I find much satisfaction from doing it the best I can. So if not that, what then draws me to write?

But of course… First and foremost, I am drawn to sharing ideas with others who, like myself, are curious, thought-provoked and open to seeing things anew. There is no more beautiful moment in a day than when I recognize commonality with another, be it through their writing or in actual meeting. I write to continually clarify my own awareness about issues we deal with as human beings and with the anticipation I will end up sharing this exploration with others doing likewise. Nothing is more delightful to me than a group of people in earnest discussion over what matters to them. Since I am not naturally social, especially at this point in my life, books represent a marvelous bridge to a greater whole and especially now to an international whole with all the  broadening possibilities that offers from those with differing perspectives. In my heart of hearts, that is why I write. Not to inflate my self image (had to look at that one closely) or to corroborate my ability, but to connect. My entire life has been one long exploration of connection or failure thereof. I know of no grander experience than when I can share a moment with another human being where we both realize we’ve touched each other deeply.

Such an occurrence can happen fleetingly in the check-out line at Kroger’s or longer within the heart of a meaningful discussion over coffee or for a lifetime if we meet the right mate. But the point is connection reveals to us the greatest of all truths – that there is only One – in endless, vibrant, creative, wondrous expression, adding a dimension of awe to life on earth. When we meet there, as Rumi attests: When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase, each other no longer make any sense.

I read authors who provide that opportunity to me, and I love them

for it. I write to do the same for others, to present a story they recognize and ways of interaction within it that can give rise to examination and perhaps discovery of new ways of seeing. At the same time, there is a shared moment of abiding connection, a starting point for dialogue, which if we intend, can last a lifetime. And with each meeting, we are reminded that the most precious of all human experiences is to re-ignite those embers which flame into everlasting recognition that we are all one-and-the-same, yet mysteriously unique. Such a memory is fraught with an unparalleled sense of peace and joy. That’s where I live. That’s why I write.

I’ve started a discussion on my Author’s Page to explore our mutual experiences of human connection. Click on the link below and add an example from your life. I put up one to start things off. The discussion is entitled: Human Connection. Looking forward to hearing of your deeply held moments in life.

Click here to share your experiences of connection.

Then scroll down to Christina Carson Forum

The Seeds that Grow Our Stories

The creative process, the one that brings us all so much pleasure either through being the creator or the recipient is indeed a strange bird. Somewhere seemingly out of the ether an idea begins to emerge. It reminds me of when I was a child and had my first

experience growing crystals. Have you ever grown a crystal?  Ah, a positively magical affair, especially to a child. You’d get your Dad to go the druggist and buy whichever chemicals were legal for you to have that had been listed in the crystal-making book you were reading. You’d make a supersaturated solution of each one of the chemicals by mixing them in water, suspend a thin twine tied to a stick which spanned the drinking glasses you’d snuck out of the kitchen…and wait. Within a day or so, the tiniest of crystals would emerge on the cord and then one would start to grow. Sometimes they’d get as big as my thumbnail. It was astonishing—these beautiful crystals from ostensibly out of nowhere – ruby red, sapphire blue and diamond clear, depending on the solution. There was a critical time period, however, which you couldn’t predetermine, in which you had to harvest the crystal or the solution begin to dissolve it and take it back.

I have always sensed that stories come into existence in just that way. Somewhere in the back of our minds saturated with intellectual and emotional experiences, a seed exists around which a story begins to form. What is that seed? That is an interesting question, for if you find it, you can watch the marvel of the creative process that unfolds. The novel Accidents of Birth began in just that manner.

I was sixteen and about to have some minor surgery. My mother had tucked me in at the hospital for a three day stay and being an independent child, almost obnoxiously so, I suggested I was just fine, and she need not come again until it was time to go home. I had never been in a hospital. I had no idea how much empty time there was lying there. There was nowhere to go, no TVs and no one to talk to as hospitals were much emptier those days. By the time late afternoon of day one rolled around, I was beginning to rue my offhanded dismissal of my mother, until the sound of soft, rhythmic singing came from down the hall followed by a gentle rap on my door. I said, “Come in.”

In response, an aging Black orderly came around the corner. His hair was salt and pepper gray, his face a deep rich brown and his eyes gentle with concern. Seeing me all alone, he began to fuss over me as if I were his blood daughter. I was awed. I had never had anyone treat me with such loving-kindness, let alone a total stranger.

Come morning, I realized it wasn’t a chance happening, for when the orderly came then, she was a forty-something year old Black woman who proceeded to care for me in the same inclusive manner, making me one of her own. Her kindness knew no bounds, and I lay there in wonder. She stayed with me until the prepping for the operation was over, and I was wheeled off.

I saw those two several more times before I left the hospital. I wanted to say something to them, but I couldn’t understand all I was feeling at that young age. I was a kid. What did I know about life and all its glaring contradictions?  But…I never forgot what it felt like to be loved like that.  

Over the years, that seed drew from all the experiences that made up my life, and eventually formed a story I would have never imagined writing – me, white, from a racist family and having always lived above the Mason-Dixon Line. Then, a protagonist emerged, a woman who was illiterate, quirky, filled with earthy wisdom and, yes, Black. That was as startling to me as any crystal I’d ever grown. Mrs. Imogene Ware came into my life, created from that original seed, and retold in her own way that sixteen year old’s experience:

“We sit quiet again. Then I git up, walk over to where she set an reach out to her. She come to me like she a frightened little child, an I hold her tight an stoke her hair, coo to her, an tell her over an over she be fine. Tell her over an over I love her so, juss who she be, an I always will. They be no doorways where love live, nothing that open an shut. They be no time where love live, nothing that begins or ends. But she don' know that, an my heart weep fo' her.”

          It took me years to grow into a place where I could write this story, have the maturity and the openness to let it come to and through me. Three days in a hospital with two incredibly caring souls gave me a gift beyond the obvious, however. It predisposed me to look at the Black culture throughout my life, and collect examples of its beauty and goodness. In the process, I met some exquisite human beings, Black women leaving their mark on the world. Out of that came Accidents of Birth, a story wrapped in the brutality and racism of the 20^th century but told as a profound love story, for the seed of this novel was love.

Some final words from Miss Imogene pondering like she so often did as she and her cart horse, Polly, traveled up and down their farm to market road:

“It clear to me now my mama didn't leave me with no suggestion. She leave me with her life. She leave me knowing my work be to love this world too, like she did. An sittin right here at the edge of this road ponderin' on what lies ahead a me, it feel more curse than grace, but that juss 'cause I be scared. An then as I look at the people round me, I see they be livin' out what they be left by they mama or they papa. An it don' seem to matter whether you respected them or not, just being round 'em for so long, who they be an what they believe seep into ya. An it don' look like no easy thing to be achangin' that. But by God above, there muss be some way to use what we learn to make our chiluns' lives kinder and happier, not juss repeating our woes. Then I chuckle quietly as I think of the years of slavery, an racism, an poverty, an disease, an it occur to me history don' seem to favor that notion. Well, I do, indeed I do.”

And so do I.

America – Have the Dreams Ended

“When the legends die, the dreams end.

When the dreams end, there is no more greatness.”

So said Tecumsah, leader of the Shawnee. Who better to understand this quote than the aboriginal peoples of this land? Tecumsah’s words returned to me after watching the poignant documentary, One PM Central Standard Time, a telling look at a period in American history. This film, cleverly structured, wove together the life of Walter Cronkite and John F. Kennedy when their paths irrevocably crossed on November 22, 1963. Cronkite was a king among journalists, the father of the evening news to Americans of several generations. We read him, listened to him on radio, and when television came in around this corner of history, we finally watched him, this epitome of a hard driving newsman set on being the first to voice every story he caught. The movie takes you into the old-time wire rooms where the news was gathered, and lets you relive the challenges with which the news industry dealt having no internet, no cell phones, but only pay phones to relay their stories. It introduces you to newsmen who honored their profession with
their adherence to a code that insisted on confirmation, not innuendo or speculation. At that time, we could trust the voices of the great newsmen, and in that world, Walter Cronkite was top of the mark. Like crawling up into your grandfather’s lap each night, America came to Cronkite for a voice offering the comforting assurance that the truth would be spoken.

On the other side of the print page of that era was a youthful, charming, handsome man, his intelligent and gracious wife and their young family—the Kennedy's— a symbol of vitality and possibility to which Americans warmly related. Like the sun of a new dawn, here was this president, beginning to reach his stride and take a heretofore inward-looking nation out into the world with a view toward peace and prosperity. We began to experience ourselves as charitable toward and curious about those beyond our boundaries. The love children, the hippie movement, the revolution in music were not agents of this change but an affirmation of the uplifting sense of well-being that existed in the America of those times. Our homegrown values of respect, taking responsibility, keeping one’s word and extending a helping hand were still intact, values that ensured citizens they could better themselves. Values which underpinned hope, created legends and engendered dreams. It was a beautiful time to be an American.

That ended at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it placed Walter Cronkite in a moment of great decision. He wanted to be the first to break that news, but the lack of phones made it impossible to track down any voice of authority to confirm the story. The practice was that reporters would go to the nearest pay phone, call into the wire room and instruct the person who answered the phone NOT to hang up, thus keeping the line open for them. But that limited available phones even more. As much as he wanted to be the voice of that historic moment, he would not break the story because it had not yet been officially confirmed. His next challenge was that he couldn’t go live on TV as it took about a half hour to get those old cameras ready. So he delivered a radio-type message transmitted over the TV while the audience stared at a gray screen, listening. His voice echoed through their homes and places of work saying only that it was reported that John Fitzgerald Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time but it was not yet confirmed. He delivered this horrific message clearly and without sentiment. His tears came later.

And so ended an era. News quickly became a commodity that was bought, sold and traded without the ethics of the earlier time. It became a place to reach stardom rather than honor. The country became more deeply entrenched in a war that awakened the bully in American politics, instilling the notion we could rightfully tread onto foreign soil without invitation or a by-your-leave. The values that had retained this great nation’s capacity to re-balance itself when it leaned too far right or left, tottered toward greed rather than compassion, or avowed lies instead of truth began to disappear from the political arena, the newsroom and our families. Taking responsibility for our acts, the fastest way there has ever been to rectify a situation, lost favor as an American choice.

We of that generation saw the legends end with the death of JFK and our dreams end April 4, 1968 when the last great dream speaker this country had, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. So if Tecumsah was right, and I sense he was, our time of greatness may be over.

Watch One PM Central Standard Time and, in the face of this upcoming election, see what you think.