Landscapes of the Inner Life

Music pours out, as if I was born to it, or it was born of me through dimensions, layers, lifetimes. I am searching through dreams, thoughts and memories for the words and soundlines to bring this story through. Long ago, before any maps were made, there were people who found their way across vast oceans, sensing and imagining their way over distances where none of their known ancestors had ever gone before. Of course, the ancient people used their ordinary senses, looking out across the endless water, feeling its currents, the movement of winds and the play of weather, day after day, month after month. Physically traversing those distances, with all the rigors of the body and the elements, they also believed themselves into the space, bringing the other shore to them magnetically. Way-Finding they called it.



We each have our own Way Finding. My own predilections always draw me back to the white marble room, an immense lustrous chamber with high vaulted ceilings and tall arched windows. It is a dear, familiar place, a refuge from the rush of the modern world. I have spent many days and nights there, reading, feeling the sun on my face, looking out at the stars and moon.

Sometimes I wish that I were still living in a time when we could bury ourselves in solitude, when the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge and the work of the soul’s metamorphosis had at least as much collective import as did outer successes. I yearn for that amidst the depredations of the current era. Inwardly, I yearn for leisure, spaciousness, and grace. Outwardly, I yearn for great forests, glens, prairies and all the undiminished richness and variety of Nature to sing out in ecstatic splendor, drowning the sounds of machines, drowning not only their sounds, but their imprint on our lives, our enslavement to them.


In this marble wonderful room there is a globe that stands on a long wooden table. Aside from the table and two chairs, the room is very empty. But it has a sense of space, light, and depth that never fails to refresh and renew me. Texts with gem-like illustrations, their pages edged with gold, fill one wall of the room. The instruments and substances of alchemy are also set out on the wooden table. In that room, I am the woman whose forehead shines with light. I am my own beacon.

My house has many other rooms. From the beautiful white marble room, a heavy wooden door opens out to a narrow hallway. I must take the lantern with me. The hallway winds and turns, its stairs descending deep into the earth. The air here is old and dry. I remember the first time I went down these stairs with this same lantern, arriving at a doorway covered with heavy, deep red brocade cloth. I gently pulled the cloth aside and looked into the room that appeared before me. It was not more than ten feet by twelve feet large, illuminated by votive candles set on a ledge that ran along its walls. Its ceiling was low, its dark walls were hewn from black rock. Three icons hung on the walls-- one of Jesus, one of the Black Madonna, and one of St. Michael. In the candlelight, their golden halos blazed out from the dark backgrounds of the paintings.

I saw all this instantaneously, the way the mind's eye takes things in. At the same time, I saw an ornate, jewel-encrusted coffin in which lay an old King, strong and undecayed. His deep red robe was embroidered with flowers sewn of golden threads. His beautiful golden crown was set with rubies and emeralds. It took me many months to bring back the memory of the Queen who lay beside him like a still flower. She had a perfume, not of death, but of the ineffable.

The sheer wonder of the place drew me in. I was thirsty for the things that showed themselves to me there, though I cannot now put words together to explain what they were, nor would I wish to. I hope you do not want me to explain the subterranean chamber or the marble room. Every definition I fix on them confines their numinous resonance. I do not wish to flatten or inflate them. Let them be just as they are. Let them remain or fade away as they will.

Of course I have a Tower. To my mind, no house is well done without a Tower reaching out to meet the sky. This is a story of my house and my journey. Of course that makes me fall over laughing. Why? Because as Lorca once said in a poem, “My house is not my house, and I am no longer I.” It is not real or solid, none of it. It has no substance. I have no substance. The whole thing is dreamlike, as much a dream as the splendid and transformative marble room to which I return again and again.

As I approach my seventh decade, I return to these landscapes of my inner life and those that comprise my outer story and I reflect on their patterns, meaning and luminous, empty nature. Even when I am washing the dishes in my kitchen part of me lives in these mythically resonant rooms of dream and imagination, in the woods and fields, the white marble room, the Tower. Even when I am deeply immersed in my inner life experience, everyday activities draw me to them, reminding me that they too also have an unpredictable, mysterious depth. In the midst of family and friends, with the appearance of both invited and unexpected guests, the mythic drama of the present moment spills forth. Decade after decade, treasure accumulates.

Letting the Imagination Run Wild, and Talking to the Air

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." ~Michelangelo

"The Possible's slow fuse is lit By the Imagination." ~Emily Dickinson

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." ~Albert Einstein


I like to let my imagination run wild. Being a grown-up can be way too serious at times. And I do have adult matters to attend to. My musical play on aging is finished, and now I am about to raise the money to produce it. That's serious business, and something I look forward to accomplishing within the next couple of months.

But my imagination wants to run wild, too. So I revisited my old fantasy of taking off in a painted gypsy wagon, something my father always talked about when I was a child. And after several days of great longing and looking at pictures of gypsy wagons, imagining packing everything up and taking off, I had a stark revelation. I would not want to take a gypsy wagon out in America. Contraindicated, period. Maybe there was still a rosy glow for my father, but it doesn't work for me. So I put that one aside. It's not as if I have no other dreams and adventures. So I leave the gypsy wagon adventure for folks in England, Ireland and other parts of Europe, where there is culture and tradition that supports the experience.

Last night I went back to my unfinished memoir Songs of the Inner Life, a project I began when I was 53. It has gone through various incarnations as I explored voice and content. Now I am certainly old enough to finish it. And I want to finish it. It is an expression that is important for me to complete.

To me, letting the imagination run wild is profoundly nourishing and exhilarating. My own favorite ways to do it are writing, performing, dancing and singing. Sometimes the imagination wants to play with no outer activity. Then I love letting it run wild while I am lying in the dark or floating in the water or sitting on a hill with a broad vista all around. Talking to the air. Things do show up from thin air. Listening to the air. Resting and playing while doing absolutely nothing at all.

How do you let your imagination run wild?

Entertaining the Possibility

The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.
--Emily Dickinson

I'm having lunch today with a man in his 90s. He directed several plays in town over the past few years. The only other thing I know about him is that he has a courtly email style. I wrote to him recently to tell him about my musical play A New Wrinkle. "I cannot let this bold query go unanswered!" he replied. That was a good beginning, and I am looking forward to meeting him.

I am meeting many new people these days. On February 15th, composer Laura Rich and I will do the first run-through of songs in the play with the help of 4 singers and a pianist--I haven't met any of them. I put a call out for singers via two local choirs, and people responded. One thing I have found moving lately (I have a long list) is how enthused some people are about helping with A New Wrinkle, even though they know virtually nothing about it.

It's encouraging to be met with enthusiasm and support. I put out two fundraising appeals via my email list and through Elderwomanspace, an Internet community I belong to, and donations have been arriving in my Sage's Play post office box. Sometimes people tell me they admire me or thank me for asking for what I want or need. They send little love notes and messages of support. It's pretty darn wonderful. It warms me up and provides some funding to move forward. I have to look at writing grants soon, too.

I posted the image of the beautiful flowering meadow here because it nourishes me on this early February morning. Ahh, the green, the flowers, the warm, warm sun. I am not planning any outer travel at the moment, so this meadow is an imagination vacation.

Lately, I've had many opportunities to reflect about how what we believe possible is conditioned or limited by our perception and belief. Like when the big ship arrived and the indigenous inhabitants of that place simply did not see it because that ship was outside of their idea of what was possible. Which brought me back last week to "It's nothing that a month in Greece wouldn't cure" a statement often repeated during my second marriage.

When the thought came back to me again, I had to laugh. I'm not saying that I have to go to Greece for a month just because I thought of it, but I am saying it is possible.
It is possible I will go to Greece for a month. That makes me grin.

I am looking for any other big ships that have sailed into the harbor without me seeing them, and checking into the possibilities they hold. Last thing this morning--an appreciative thank you to all the helpful people and allies who have been appearing and who will appear. I welcome your presence and activity in my life.