Three-Ring Circus

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 2/13/10 w/Marta

Color. Right away I see lots and lots of color. The non-subject, non-topic for me always inspires something even if it’s nothing at all. For some reason – mysterious to me – this non-topic inspires dislike.

Perhaps because circus reminds me of the closest thing to what I experienced as circus. The Northern Maine Fair, which took place in Presque Isle for all of my growing-up years was not something I especially enjoyed, although I was expected to enjoy it. I disliked the fast, tortuous rides that turned the body in every possible posture—the very thought of which made me physically ill. I didn’t even like the idea of the so-called more gentle merry-go-round with its tall colorfully painted horses. You’d never get me on one of those.

I did accept, at least, one time riding in one of the booths that were also scattered among the horses on the merry-go-round. I felt dizzy afterwards. My aunt went with me.

The one and only thing I did enjoy was the pink cotton candy. And someone in the family, usually my uncle, winning some kind of little doll or toy animal on a stick for me to carry home after the day was over delighted me as well. These were the high points.

The fireworks at night, I dreaded most of all. I loved the colors and beautiful forms in the sky, but the noise made me terribly nervous and was too much like thunder for my liking. It was closer than thunder and so much the more nerve-racking. I don’t remember Mom and Dad taking me to this affair. I do remember my aunt and uncle, who were visiting from New York taking me. Sometimes my Maine cousins were present. It’s all a blur. They would have been there, of course.

I do recall one year when my closest cousin Carl coaxed me into the tilter-world. He said, “It’ll be fun. See, it’s not so bad.” By then, I was probably ten or eleven years old. I figured I should give this a try. Maybe it will be fun. It was not.

I found myself certain I was going to die during this awful whirling business. We sat inside something like a cup-and-saucer-shaped enclosure and held on to a metal bar, while it began slowly at first to turn and while turning being whirled around along with other cups and saucers on this metal platform that was also moving round and round like a giant turn table. I must have been out of my mind to agree to this. I screamed at the top of my lungs, it seemed. But no one heard me. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to get off. I couldn’t even hear myself scream, the sound of the whole thing drowned out every other possible noise. I think my cousin Rita was with me in this thing. Each cup and saucer held only two people. When the rig finally came to a stop, I tried to pretend I was fine. “Get up,” she said to me. “It’s over.” You could have fooled me. I was seeing green. Everything was green. I did get off the thing, but whirled around for the rest of the day. I was sick, sick, sick – and knew then, that I would never, ever get on one of these rides again.

But, I think a few years later, I rode the roller coaster. Then, it was for sure – never again.

There are things in life that are worth trying at least once, but then, there are things that are best well-left alone. Later on, I would trust my gut more than what others of my peers would insist was great fun.

Perhaps I missed out on lots of fun, but I think not. Not for me. I chose my own spaces and places – even if it meant I was more of an observer than a participant. Even when it came to marriage and children; if I had really, really thought that would have been fun for me, I feel sure now that I would have tried this. I know all of this better in retrospect from my current vantage point – so many years away from adolescence and young adulthood – all of which was hard labor for me to navigate. I’m so relieved now to have it all behind me. I am pleased with things in my life just as they are right now.

I have questioned, I have explored, I still do, but with less of “my life depends on it” feeling inside. I never married. I have no children. I’ve felt sad about that in the past.

I have a very significant other in my life. It’s really quite wonderful that we’ve found each other – different from one another as we are – we also share some common threads that bind us. I don’t feel the need to examine all of it that closely anymore – even as I write this – I have a propensity I know to do just that. But, that too is growing less and less.

It’s hard to put into words the really close stuff. Some distance is required to get some kind of expressive hold on it.

I read a quote by Erica Jong not too long ago. Something like this. “All we humans need in life are something to eat, something to drink and someone to love us.”

I like that. It’s not someone to love that she says, but someone to love us – which I think is more honest and true. To feel loved is the most wonderful thing in life. We’re always saying or hearing that we should love one another. Love is a verb. It’s important to love someone. It’s important to love yourself. But it feels ever more true to me that we need to be loved. And that means that we also need to let love in; to believe that we are loved; that it is true when someone says they love us; that they really mean it. But, again that implies that I must do something. I have to be able to let the love in. I’m getting weary of doing so much. But in order to eat and drink, I must work, so it’s no surprise that I must work also to allow someone to love me.

Letting someone love me in the way they want to love me without my dictating the way I want to be loved is also my work. But it’s a work I can enjoy and a ride I can tolerate even if it is a bit of a tilt-a-whirl or tilter world.

In A Group

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 2/10/10

It was a year ago this past January that you and I went to the little pond not far from Wayside, where you lived, and where you had worked for the good part of thirty years. You recounted to me how as a young child you came out here and sledded down the hill with your friends and how this little pond would freeze up and you’d go ice-skating.

Well, here we were in the van when a flock of ducks flew in from, it seemed, nowhere and landed on the icy pond, and with their webbed feet attempted to walk on the ice. There must have been about twenty or thirty of them.

A smaller group broke out from the larger flock; they were determined to walk along the pond’s edge. The others remained still – watching. These daring ten or so flip-flopped on the ice sliding along, stopping as if to size up the situation and then begin again.

Undaunted, they walked on the ice and their bodies cast a shadow that was simply too much for a photographer like you not to notice. You walked to the pond with your camera and shot away. I, cold, on that frosty morning drive, remained inside the van and watched you watching them.

I have one of the black and whites here now. I’m looking at it, Fran, and I’m remembering how we delighted in that moment.

Other People's Stories

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/27/10

They do interest me, like a good film offers me a great escape from my own paranoia. I find other people’s stories can be wonderful life lessons for me. I find other people’s stories inform me of my own story. I’m not ashamed anymore like I used to be. I’m not as timid and scared of risk-taking as I used to be. I’m not so wrapped up about what other people will think or say about me like I was when I was fifteen and shy, shy, shy – seemingly afraid of my own shadow.

Now, there’s an interesting phrase – afraid of my own shadow. And well I should be. What lurks in the shadow is a fearsome thing. Writing assists me in meeting my shadow head-on; my envy, my jealousy, my longings and selfish pre-occupations, my guilty delights.

Writing is a pressure-release-valve that allows me an exploring debit card by which I’m not permitted to take out and put on paper more than what’s in the bank. It’s my bank of life experience. I’m not allowed to write other people’s stories and pass them off as my own. I could hardly do this, since I cannot know first-hand other people’s experiences from the inside – and for me what’s inside is all that really matters.

We All Have To Go To Sleep

DeAnn Louise Daigle 1/25/10

We all have to go

to sleep sometime.

We may not be ready

or we may.

It won't matter.

When the time comes

and come it will.

We all have to go to sleep.

For The First Time

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/23/2010

Poets House. After about five minutes of looking around and then sitting down, I realize, clearly, that I hadn’t come here to read other people’s poetry. I had come here to write my own.

I came in and was greeted by a young man probably in his twenties, “Welcome. Is this your first time at Poets House?”

“Thank you. No, I came in September at the opening.”

“Would you mind signing the guest book?”

I signed my name, filled in my e-mail address though I doubted they could read it. People generally have trouble reading my e-mail address when I write it. I made a small donation, went to straighten out my looks in the restroom, and debated as to whether or not I should hang up my coat by the entrance, leaving it there while I went along upstairs. There were about three coats and jackets hanging on the clothes rack. I decided to carry my two hundred dollar feather coat upstairs.

The cushy chair by the window is wide and easily supports me and my coat and my bag as well. It’s quiet … very quiet, and the staff tip toes on the wooden floor.

Suddenly this feels like a sacred space. It holds art and it invites art to be made here. There’s only the droning sound of the air system. The windows overlook the Hudson River, the playground in the foreground and New Jersey in the background on the other side of the Hudson.

People are jogging along the boardwalk and parents and children – only a few on this cold yet sunny Saturday morning – are in the playground. Parents are pushing swings while children enjoy the movement while parents converse among one another. Other children are quietly playing in sandboxes and some are rocking in a kind of single see saw while others are skipping about.

Lots of jungle gyms are empty for now. It’s like watching a silent moving picture show. The window glass blocks out the outdoor noises.

The icons in this sacred space are shelves of books containing the words and phrases of artists. No stained glass windows here. Plenty of daylight from the long windows fills the lightly painted space where white and yellow walls reflect light back on itself and throughout. Long florescent suspended ceiling light bulbs hang over the stacks down away from where I sit.

My pew offers a splendid view.

Now, there are more running children in the playground and the jungle gyms are being used and parents walk around after their tiny progeny. Signs that read Stop and Raise Plow and No Standing Anytime line the side street where cars are parked and not parked along the playground space. Street lights – the old fashioned kind – line the side walk too. These are not gas lit like in the old days. They are electric and probably on a timer set to go off at nightfall. They give a pretty and romantic feel to this whole outdoor space.

Cabs drive by – all silently. The trees are bare of leaves and I know spring and summer will change the view. These trees will obscure some of the river view and some of the New Jersey panorama. What a great soft and silent space this is! I am delighted to be here.

Two helicopters hover above the Hudson and a jet leaves its silken stream across a lightly blue and yellow sky. Children slide down the curved and winding yellow slide and a tiny little fellow runs back to his red stroller.

A boat named Zephyr is heading up the Hudson. And a few people are walking dogs. Now, children – older ones – are running up the yellow curvy slide – young boys about nine or ten years old. They’re running and jumping on and off the jungle gyms like the boys back home did on the railroad cars. Boys – full of energy and daring.

A man is parallel parking a car across the street and does it with admirable ease.

A woman runs out of a car to jump the low divide and into the playground. A man leaps over the same divide; looks like she’s relieving him. She’s come to be with her child in the playground. There are two children and she’s up on the tiered platform with them. And Dad just returned. All four of them are now up on the jungle gym-like platform.

I am delighted to be here.

I must go now; grocery shopping to do and errands to run. Jim and I plan to see a movie later.

This is my first time writing at Poets House. I will return again.

Leaving What Was Known

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/20/2010

I felt an amazing inner freedom that was more exuberance than anything I’d felt in years.

It was warm and sunny, I was heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the bus ride down Fifth Avenue. I’d just left East Harlem and talking with Teresa. We had gone for a walk in Central Park near the Reservoir.

I’d just told her that I was leaving religious life and had initiated an appointment with our then Major Superior, Sr. Laboure. She had wanted me to wait a month before our next meeting. This entailed a trip to Portland, Maine, where our Motherhouse was located.

Teresa had been wonderfully understanding when I’d told her. I had been a bit anxious about her reaction. But, it turned out that she was deeply supportive of my decision, knowing it had not been made lightly.

I admired her for her commitment to service and great love of the people who were homeless, her dedication to working with them and her love of teaching. I admired her clear-sightedness. I guess she saw that I was beginning to develop my own clear-sightedness, and she rejoiced with me – even though neither one of us knew where my life was going.

I clearly was taking charge and though nothing was formulated by way of a great deal of planning just yet, we both felt the rightness of my decision to leave religious life.

Perhaps it was in her great joy for me that I found inner freedom to at last trust myself. It was this that was so extraordinarily exhilarating on that sunny Sunday afternoon.

I was free at last!

Even though I was asked to wait a month, I knew my decision had been made and it was as good as done. I would be free to explore this world and God on m own – taking with me all that I had learned and creating the space to learn more and more and more.

Declaring Independence

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/20/2010

I don’t remember how I got the ball rolling on this issue, but I do remember the early morning at the School of Prayer, waking up and thinking, weighing the pros and cons of leaving.

In front of me outside the third story window, I looked at the Twin Towers rising above the trees in Washington Square Park. They were magnificent. Such a statement of imagination and possibility! I would miss this view.

I would miss – maybe – the early Morning Prayer and meditation together in community. I would not miss the rush that followed. Prayer and meditation were supposed to prepare us for the day, but often these practices felt artificial due to the momentous responsibility that required our earning a living for the good of all.

I never did integrate the contemplative with the active while I remained in religious life, and something inside indicated to me that I never would – if I stayed.

Hadn’t I committed for life to the community? Would I be happy continuing to live in this way? I had learned earlier that I did have options. But once you make a commitment, do you still have options?

I had lived on my own before. I had paid the bills, the rent, phone, electricity and heat. I knew how to do these things. I had had a checking account and savings account. I had lived on my own before. I knew how to shop for food and clothing. I had lived alone.

I was familiar with all those feelings from a past of almost twenty years before, and now I was about to do it again in a similar fashion – leaving what was known for what was unknown. I had to do it! It was about choosing life over death – once again!