📍PAPII #07
Against the weight of sadness - Glimpses of Grace in Gold
The weight of things has felt particularly heavy on me these past couple weeks, and reminds me of this collage of 17 beats I assembled 18 months ago.
Without words to comment further on that right now, here are some pins…..
📍Waiting is (Still) Not Easy — This is a nod back to a post I wrote a couple weeks ago because that’s how the pins work for me along this way.
📍The Pitt. Last night David and I finished watching Season 1 of The Pitt. I am not good at watching TV and am rarely able to participate in any conversations about current shows. But as I said in the previous pin’s posting, something about The Pitt captivated me from the start.
Perhaps it is because I am interested in people’s regular life stories as they journey through hard stuff and this show contains a lot of spinning plates when it comes to people’s regular life hard stories. I’ve liked tracking along with the variety of characters through this season and I’ll definitely be watching to see what comes for them in Season 2 (next January).
But it is especially weird that I got so easily hooked by this show — not only is it true that I am not usually a TV watcher, but also — this show is set in an Emergency Room. There is a lot of trauma and blood and fast paced activity throughout. And a lot of yelling. I watch through squinting eyes a lot of the time as the medical teams work together to meet the nonstop emergencies that come through their doors.
In my real life, I’ve had reasons to sit with people in emergency waiting rooms and been ushered back to the little room where medical people pull curtains around the bed and make assessments, but I’ve never done so in a truly urgent, life-threatening scenario.
Except for that time when I was the one in the bed. But that time, I didn’t come through the front doors and wait in the waiting room, I arrived by helicopter and was rushed straight in for urgent, life-saving care.
As I watched The Pitt these past weeks, I found myself in a “can’t look away” posture. Like I was hungry. Curious for clues. I have 48 hours of missing memory in my memory tapes. There is a distinct Before and After in the story of my life. David and I can quickly trace a trail back to the car accident that landed me in the St. Charles Bend Emergency Room— The choices we’ve made, the consequences. The unfolding of time for us has been shaped by something that happened to me 20 years ago on a mountain in June. And I can’t remember it.
When I watch The Pitt I have a visceral reaction to the yelling. It’s as if I am getting really close to something, but I can’t quite see. As if it holds some sort of answer to a thing I’ve never been able to quite understand.
The show gets great reviews - it’s not just me. (And if you ever want to talk about what happens between Robby and Whitaker in episode 14, I’m here for it.)
📍Getting really close to something I can’t quite see — I feel like this actually taps into my resonance with Eowyn Ivey’s new book, Black Woods, Blue Sky. In a uncharacteristic move for me, on Monday I dumped a 500 piece puzzle to the table and put Ivey’s latest book in my ears and basically did not stop (that’s the uncharacteristic part) till I finished the puzzle that evening and got within a couple hours of the end of the book, which I finished the next morning. Ivey builds stories with magical realism and her work works for me. This story pushes into territory of wild Alaska and the human soul. Seen and unseen. Love and memory. These are things I am left thinking about.
I have a couple related pins I feel compelled to put here —
📌 The time when our family won the snow sculpture competition at the Anchorage library when Ivey was promoting her first book.
https://jennifersearls.com/build-a-bear-snow-child-living-the-adventure/
Honestly, this post is hard for me to re-read - 12 years on, but I stand by it….believing in my gut the truth of things I said. And in hope, as hard as that can be to hold.
📌 The time I got my picture snapped while getting Ivey to autograph my copy of The Snow Child and it appeared in the Anchorage paper.
I have always loved the headline over that photo. I was there for her autograph, but I know she was not the only writer.
📌 Several years later, in 2017, I went to a book signing of her mother’s, the poet Julie LeMay. I had taken some poetry classes through 49 Writers and was working as the Layout Editor for Alaska Women Speak at the time and LeMay talked to me like writer-to-writer. What a kind and gracious woman. I remember our conversation with gratitude. She signed my copy of her book —
She died of cancer in 2019. The year I was working on my daily 17-Beats project.
📍National Dandelion Day was April 5. My mother diligently picks dandelion heads out of our yard as she wages war on the bright spots yellow scattered across the lawn in this season. She does not celebrate.
Our family has a very favorite video clip of little Ethan sticking his head through the cat flap of our back door and delivering me wads of dandelions, more powahs, mommy! Seeing that clip never gets old.
And I am reminded of my posts on dandelions through the years —
Fists Full of Gold
A Glimpse of Grace in Gold — in which I see that I wrote in June 2016 exactly what I needed to read for myself today. I recommend it, even if I do say so myself. 😏
📍This morning I read a post by Rob Walker that I wanted to end with here, but as I went to link it for the pin, I realized it is behind a paywall. Walker writes The Art of Noticing newsletter and has published a book by the same title. In today’s post he talks about taking an “Attention Journey” through a walk around the block — he discusses this in the context of travel, but as I headed out on a walk with the dog this morning I decided to pull out my camera and document my attention along the journey through my own neighborhood. Here are some things —
Rusty had some things he could report too, but he’s outside right now and not available for comment.
Okay, that’s it for this edition of PAPII, but before I go —here’s a shot of the rainbow I walked out to the orchard to snap the other day. Rusty The Farm Dog figured I’d want him in the picture too. Of course. My (sometimes) Glimpse of Grace in Gold.
WOW! Great and beautiful stories! Thank you!!
I love your writing so much. And all the connections and recommends, and the way you see things. ❤️