Yesterday while working on my novel during the vanpool ride to and from work (the novel that has pre-empted frequent blog-posts), my fingers started writing (it wasn’t my mind, it was my fingers) that the protagonist actually loved a certain place in the world more than she had loved her ex-husband. And she had loved her ex-husband profoundly. The place happened to be the Pacific Northwest. The place unlocked who she really was.
It’s funny how our fingers, or another part of our body, will carry and deliver an insight our minds hadn’t been seeing.
Then this morning I found a short editorial in the New York Times about St. Patrick’s day, and a wonderful album by Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains that combines Irish, Mexican and American music — themes of both loss and joy — into a soulful, stirring whole. The editorial points out that almost all of us were once immigrants. “We are all people who have lost our land in one sad way and found another . . . . whether we lament and celebrate in a pub or cantina . . . . we are closer to one another than we remember.”
Funny how that brought me to sudden tears. I brought the newspaper up over my face here in Seven Virtues coffeehouse so that I could cry in private for a minute. The love of a place, the way that land, or home, can in effect grow and cultivate our souls, carve them into a particular, beautiful shape the way the Missoula floods carved out the Columbia Gorge here in Oregon over many millenia, is a psychic bridge between me and everyone else in the world.
Hard as it often is to find in this fast-paced culture, I love that bridge. Sometimes I cry when I am my happiest.
This is a poem I wrote and framed in handmade paper for an art show I did here in Portland back in July, 1993. The show was called Pagan Christianity.
The Journey Home by Alison Wiley
Be we Druids, aborigines, pagans or Christians
It is toward our gods we stumble as urchins
Spirits made flesh, we restlessly roam
Dancing and tripping along the journey back home.
Oh my goodness – this is so lovely it made me cry! Thank you, fingers of Alison Wiley, mind of Alison Wiley, for sharing your gifts with us all out here. You are truly appreciated. …Simply beautifully written…
I cry when I’m happy too and yes the love of place can be very powerful
Good to hear these thoughts, Alli and Ms. Poet . . . . . I’m just reflecting that we women, on the whole, seem to have richer emotional lives than men . . . . which is something I really like about us
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I’m going to comment on your last comment … hope that’s OK.
When it comes to strong emotional connections to place, I would say many men are actually quite connected. My husband had a “moment” this winter that I’ll let him tell you about sometime.
Colleen, I stand corrected. I think what happens is that women tend to more readily verbalize their emotional responses than men– whether those emotions are about love of place or anything else. Anyone can have a rich emotional life; it just won’t always be visible to others.