Seeking Sanctuary

“The natural world is the refuge of the spirit … richer even than human imagination.”
—Edward O. Wilson

From Fleurs to Flourishing

“If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

(This is purportedly from Saadi’s Golestan, which means The Rose Garden. I’ve not been able to verify it, but it speaks to me today.)

A Cry in the Alley

"All I've had is Misery—for years and years and years and years and years and years and years."

She wailed this into the cellphone that may or may not be in the hand cupped to her ear. She's dressed well enough from what I can tell from my third-floor window, yet her shopping cart holds the telltale signs of a homeless life.

Just a moment ago she had shouted a few expletives that drove me from my much-needed sleep to my back porch. Country folk have roosters; in my neighborhood, we have the cries of the distressed or the demented or the drunk reverberating off the walls of buildings. I always have to decide which it is so I know whether the police should get involved. (Not sure why I think like that. The police rarely answer a call on my street.)

You know what people sound like when they sob or scream from someplace deep in the fibers of their souls? When they use every scrap of air and energy to expel whatever demons and sorrows are barnacled there? I don't know how to spell that particular sound, but this middle-aged woman uttered every syllable of every word that way—explosively, plaintively, desperately.

I sounded like that last week in my car. But I was by myself. In a closed container. This woman was on a very public stage expressing her grief.

"I don't like it here," she continued.

None of us would. None of us would want to be in her shoes in that alley in that moment of time. I wish I could hand her a salve for her spirit or relief from her life.

Instead, I'm writing to you—passing on her woes. How should one respond to a cry in the alley? 

Blazing Ahead Toward a New Image

As I continue to search for my "place" (i.e., my job, my address, my identity, my calling) in the Universe—to discover the new, improved me—I realize I first have to accept whoever it is that I am. And with acceptance will come a boldness that says I'm not ashamed of who I am and I make no apologies for it. Writer Rhiannon Gammill imagines a woman who embodies that spirit:

" ‘This is who I am, you don’t have to like me and you don’t have [to] approve of me, but I’ve been to this pony show before and this time I’m getting what I want. I’ve got one voice, two chins, and more style than should be allowed by law and I’m not apologizing for any of it’ and then, I don’t know, puts her cigarette out on her arm.” 

My great-great-grandmother on the Earp side (yeah, you read right—the outlaw outsized Earps of film fame) was a rodeo performer, so I tend to think somewhere in my DNA is exactly what I need to get through The Lull.