Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Grumbling Lack Through the Horn of Plenty

Friends return from the high altitudes of South America, breathless and vowing to kiss every weed that’s grown in their garden since they’ve been gone.  They came home early, tired of being tourists. They missed good friends, their cozy island kitchen and homegrown food.  Back on home soil, they prostrate to paradise.

In early March, I’m in the swaying palm oasis.  Bare legs, a thin dress and no socks.  I chop fresh ginger and squeeze lemon from the tree.  Prep beets from Mary’s garden that I’ll pair with one of the four softball-sized avocados left on my front door step.  I eat a banana from the grove outside my door.  The spread of fresh food before me is a tropical cornucopia, my everyday fare.

photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved

Then why so grumpy?  I’ve been laying in bed for a week in a fevered state wondering what on earth I’m doing on this island out in the middle of no where.  It’s been fourteen years and counting. Is this where I’ll end my days?  A picturesque backdrop to some honeymooner’s photo album?

Am I ungratefully peering down the throat of the fruitful gift horse? Why does it feel like there’s a price to eat in paradise?  Because no one eats for free and my ticket to ride is the cost of isolation.  Living in this remote locale sometimes feels as though Jeb and I are islands unto ourselves, floating out in a vast sea.  Because we are.

Maybe I’m just edgy because it’s been four days without coffee and small things are getting on my nerves.  I’m in one of those moods where it’s actually annoying to hear someone exclaim, “This island is so beautiful!”  It’s no fun to be bummed in paradise.

I know the grass is greener syndrome.  I’ve seen the cattle lean through barb wire to flap their lips towards what they must think are longer, more luscious stems. Friends whisk away on an exotic trip to the Andes only to make a U-turn back home.  Their appreciative comments on the drive back from the airport reverberate from the cornucopia bullhorn.

“Ah, the air is so warm!”

“I can’t wait to eat from the garden again!”

“I love our road!”

Which end of the horn am I looking through?  The small and narrow opening or the gushing wide mouth full of plenty?  Is it possible to see all of the abundance and still honor the fact that island life can be hard?

As I sip my vanilla tea this morning, I hear my grumbles.  I guess I’ll follow the grumpy thread, peel a banana, and maybe more will be revealed.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Pregnant Pause

It’s as if some giant, invisible hand pressed down and stilled me.  Wrapped feverish fingers around my small frame, humbling me into a great pause. As I twist in bedsheets and a pile of tissues, the hand gives a swift flick to my cell phone and slams the laptop shut with a single tap of its thumb. This overbearing palm insists complete submission – no distraction.  I’m left to breathing and the thoughts behind closed eyes.

From my bed I craft partial posts for the Archives in my mind, then leave them unfinished to seep into my fluid haze.

Budgetary calculations raise their numeric heads (fueled by the fact that I’ve missed a week of work due to this illness).

I ponder access points to time travel.  What exactly is a morphic field?

Think of portrait artist Alice Neel, who raised two sons but never sacrificed her art. Her boys say they suffered because of it and Neel’s work was never recognized till old age.

I dwell on a summer scene in Seattle, 1994.  Me, on a porch in a hand-me down skirt.  He, the Swiss traveler with a golden goatee and clear eyes.  How we threw our watches away at the Center of the Universe and left the city in my Subaru.  We found the lighthouse that marked my ancestor’s utopia.  Slept in island forests.  10,000 Maniacs in the tape deck.  The warmth of fire.

photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved

My muscles ache despite five pillows.  Outside lightening flashes bright.  It is silent in the pregnant pause.  Then the thunder booms.

Here in the dark, day four in this bed, I’m living in the space between.  Like that span between light and sound, I am suspended.  Charged but not yet fully realized.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Showing Up to Dust and Sunlight

http://www.joycerupp.com

Quite present in the here and now, I spent yesterday monitoring Jeb’s low-grade fever, haggling prices with a car salesman, sweeping dust bunnies from under my bed and steam cleaning my floors.  Feeling the same kind of “nesting” energy just before giving birth to my son, I wonder what is driving this flurry of practicalities.

This morning in a newly angled bed, beneath all fresh linens, I drink coffee under the covers and allow myself a moment with a book.  Joyce Rupp’s “Walk in a Relaxed Manner” chronicles her 37 day pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago at the age of 60.

Only two chapters in and I’ve found quotes and passages that resonate.  Somehow I feel a weaving of the Archives, northern Spain and my current dust pan tasks.  She reminds that the ancient way of the Camino is a physical reflection of the path we each walk in life.  How do we take our steps?

“…on a refugio wall in El Burgo Ranero.  It said:  ‘Peregrina (pilgrim) you do not walk the path, the path is YOU, your footsteps, these are the Camino.'”

I can nurture romantic visions of walking a stony path in forests filled with purple crocus, but perhaps the treasure found there is just as rich as what could be touched, here, as I wipe down my window screens (well, I’m not sure how much of that you’d actually want to touch).  Certainly there is beauty in imagining a sacred path in a distant land.  I’ll keep that dream alive.  Yet right here, golden morning sun lights the drooping banana leaves like tropical icicles, heavy dew dripping in sparkled drops.

Rupp suggests that wherever you are the Camino can be found, quoting Pema Chodron’s sage advice to “train wholeheartedly.”

I am in training.  On a journey.  One step at a time.

Rupp tells of the inspiration she had to share her experience on the Camino, when at first she had been inclined to keep the special experience to herself.  It was an article she read including Joseph Campbell’s description of the mythic hero, someone who ends a journey with one of two kinds of heroic acts:

“A physical act in which the individual gives his or her life in sacrifice for others, or a spiritual act, in which the hero returns to share an extraordinary experience, and thus deeply benefits the community.”

I’m no hero.  My journey is far from mythic.  But I’m on the path, in training.  I observe and call back some snippets of what I find.  Log details in the Archives.  Yesterday turned up dead moth larvae in remote corners, long untouched.  This morning it’s hints of summer sun through my bedroom window.

The path is mysterious.  My intention is connection.  The strategy?  Just keep showing up.