The Ring: A Story of Memories and Loss

In the spirit of Christmas and Solstice I wish to share a story with you all. It is not a piece of fiction but is, in fact, very real and very believable and it starts with a ring.

Now, this ring was not gold nor was it forged from precious metals stolen from maidens or has it been owned by an evil king. This was a simple piece of surgical steel engraved with what one would call “tribal designs.” From which tribe this symbol made of curved and slicing lines belonged to, I have no idea. I do not actually believe the design to have had any connection to any indigenous belief systems. Think tattooed arm band from the 90’s and you’ve just about got it.

Now my father purchased this ring in a gift shop somewhere in the Washington peninsula. I saw it, thought it was cool (I was sixteen at the time) and the ring being 10 dollars he bought it for me. It was very nice of him and I was very gracious. I had never had a ring before and I thought it was great. 

Little did any of us know, this ring would be gone from my life in less than a day.

Not twenty-four hours after the purchasing of said ring, it had found its way to the bottom of a glacial lake. The story goes like this.

Scene: Family of four, white, middle-class, stops along a scenic road to view a glacial lake.
Parents are in their mid-forties. Children are teenagers and are throwing rocks the size of bread loaves into the lake.

Mother: Stop throwing rocks.

Teenage boy: One more.

Mother: No.

Teenage boy throws one more rock. The ring he is wearing comes off and is lost in the lake. The water is only two feet deep until roughly 3 meters into the lake where the elevation plummets to a depth so far down it is terrifying to stand that close!

Thus the ring was lost to all time.

End Scene.

That December my sister finds an identical ring online and gifts it to me for Christmas. The ring was worn and loved and periodically lost many times over the next decade. Once it spent the whole of a winter under my friend’s deck. We were hot tubing and it fell off the chair where I had placed my clothes and was not recovered until the snow melted and her parents found it.

Now comes August 2012. I went to Madeline Island, WI for my friend’s birthday (different friend than the one mentioned above but no less lovely and wonderful). We were camping near a beach and when a few of us decided to go skinning dipping at night I took my ring off. Long story short, when the cop told us to put our clothes back on, the ring was temporary forgotten and thus lost to the sand and surf.

Side note: Lake Superior and I have a touchy relationship. I love that lake so much. It is beautiful, calming, and so much fun; and yet once every few years or so it takes something very important to me. My freshmen year of college I went down for a moonlight swim and forgot to take off my glasses. After diving under and resurfacing blind, I knew they were gone forever. I try to be cautious around the lake but mama has her ways and takes what she will.  

The lake has her ways and I had a feeling I would be paying for the weekend in one way or another. A sacrifice was made and that weekend will live forever in the minds and hearts of all those who were there. It was a very special vacation and carries the nine of us through the years to this day. I just celebrated the winter solstice with them for the first time and it was just as lovely and wonderful as that time on Madeline Island.

I’ve been ring-less for a few months now. At first it was really weird not wearing anything on my left thumb. It’s surprising how accustom we become to the clothes we wear or the jewelry we put on every day. I really did/do miss that ring. You can see there was some real history wrapped around it. I really wanted to keep it for a long time. Nothing like a heirloom but something to have and hold for a good portion of my life.

My parents got me two rings this Christmas. They’re like the other one in that they are both made of steel, nothing fancy. No “tribal” designs this time. They are nice and I wear them both, one on my left thumb and the other on my right index. The new rings still feel odd on my hands but in time I’ll get use to them. I don’t really have a good story for them. Never the less, in time I will have written and told tales that include them too.

Perhaps I should name them?

Cloud Atlas Review: Time for Love

*audio recording here*

Every November 5^th I start off with the intention of watching V for Vendetta. I’ve seen it maybe a dozen times and it never gets old. Perhaps that’s because the films central message is that ideas can never die. That’s a powerful message for sure. It’s true and harsh and beautiful. But I think I might have found a movie for November 6^th: Cloud Atlas.

I went to the theater last night with my dearest friend Kailey Mo Becker. I hadn’t seen her in almost 9 months and it was so wonderful to see her again. Once the movie started it took me a while to figure out what was going on exactly, in fact it took most of the 2 hours and 50 minutes. There are several main plot lines spanning four hundred years of history, many of them overlapping. But it was fun trying to fit all the shifting pieces of the puzzle around and put them together. This movie definitely requires you to use your brain, and for that I am glad. During the first half I was attempting to find the plot line for each of the stories while trying to figured out how they are all connected through time; and ultimately through love.

The acting was superb. Halle Barry plays several prominent roles as is completely redeemed for that whole Cat Woman thing. Tom Hanks (Castway, Lost in Translation, Larry Crowne) stars in just as many roles and displays a wide array of talents as an actor. Timothy Broadbent (Mulan Rouge, Harry Potter), Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), and the lovely and powerful Susan Sarandon ( Alien, Avatar, Political Animals) all performed so well in there many roles. It was a wonderful experience to see all these amazing actors play so many uniquely different roles throughout the various plot lines.

It is sort of serendipitous that I had a conversation with my parents the other night about reincarnation. My stance is (was?) that it really doesn’t matter. Past lives, eh, you can make that stuff up. You know how it ended. But if you look at the cyclical nature of things i.e. the water cycle, the carbon cycle, bird and fish migrations, the turning of the seasons –that sort of thing- then yes, I’m pretty sure we, our souls if you will, go through some sort of recycling/reincarnation thing. And that’s cool but there isn’t much I can do with a past life. I’m here now, doing my work, living this life. I have different objectives than I did in a previous life, different cells, different genetics, and different experiences. The only thing that truly matters in being the best person I can be today.

So what I loved what most about Cloud Atlas was this idea that those whom we love and those who we hurt get carried with us throughout our lives. Our circumstances change. The time we live in today is different. The technology advances but the essence, the souls of those we impact, get carried with us through time and space. It’s beautiful really. If not real than profoundly poetic to the point that its message can only aid us in our understanding of how we relate to each other. I’d like to think of the people who I’ve met in my 23 years of (this?) life that as people whom I’ve met before (maybe this is why I say “See you later” instead of “Good-bye”). Maybe my best friends were past lovers. Maybe they were family members who I had a grudge against. Bullies I elementary school were once co-workers or bosses. Friends of today and tomorrow might be my brothers and sisters in some distant future.

“From womb to tomb, our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” Sonmi-451.
-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

It’s nice to think that with all the chaos life can bring and all the transformations around us (environmental, political, economic, temporal and special) that there is a tethering –a bond of love -that we carry with us as we live and move and have our being. That no matter what happens after we pass over, if this reincarnation thing is true, if we get recycled and get to experience the joys and sorrows of an earthly existence once again, that we are still bound to one another indefinitely. In love, in pain, through it all, we will find each other time and time again.

This is most profoundly felt when Sonmi-451 (Donna Bea) is being interviewed by the Archivist, played by James D'Arcy (An American Haunting, Master and Commander) towards the end of the film. This is when all these plot lines and all the threads from all the different stories finally come together, Sonmi-451 is asked if she fell in love with Hae-Joo Chang (Jim Stuggess). She says she is still in love with him, would always love him. We are shown their love does not transcend time but flows through it, with it. We see every incarnation of their love through time. It was beautiful and lovely and yes, I cried a little.

So I think the lesson her is be kind to one another. Love one another unconditionally. Freed or enslaved. Love with all the open space a heart can have, which is, as big as whole of time.

Dancing Together

When you dance with someone
                you never dance poorly
To a song you both know every word of

                or stumble over lyrics
You take a part of them with you
                where ever you may roam
                across dusty roads and city streets
Oh yes, you’ll forget the lyrics
                and the tune
But you’ll always remember
                the way you held hands
                or how they held your back
                time and time again

and that is called love

The Love that Created the Universe

“Sue, do you remember the story about how the world came into being?” she said. The weight of the words traveled damply in the nearly black room.

“Of course,” she said harshly, “but why the hell would that matter now. How is the explosion of everything into being at once going help us.”

“Trust me when I say it’s not going to get us out of here but it will help. And if nothing else, it will occupy us for the last few minutes of our time together.

“In the beginning there was nothing. No wolves, no stars, no spears, no words or patterns or water or anything. Especially no mud padded huts with sweet smelling smoke quaffing into the night sky. Because all of these things need love to be put together and in the beginning was only Love and it circled and spiraled around itself in the nothingness of the universe. And Love saw the nothingness and loved it, cause that’s all that love knows how to do, to love is its only choice. And Love reached out into the nothingness, which is so unlike itself it had to fill up all that empty space. So love spun of out of itself and out of space and out of time, the stars and the sun and night and day everything that ever existed and everything was held together with love. And that’s why magic works. When we chose love the earth and the seeds, they in turn love the earth and sun and grow and give back to us. And when we chose love the lamb and it feels that love it gets better. But we even have to choose love death, for some times people are not meant to get over an illness and they are meant to follow that current of love into something new and just as lovely.”

And Susan feels that weight on her heart again. She could see tears beginning to form in the corner of her sister’s eyes and her trembling words.

“We can’t be afraid to let all that love come in and we can’t horde it with jealousy or greed. We have to chose to be a channel for love and give it form but not be attached to that form. It is the biggest and hardest thing we have to do. ”

And then Susan collapsed into her sisters outspread arms. She knew then the truth of it all. The power of love and the choice to let it all come in and extend back out. A weight around her heart which she thought was always there fell away like so many tapestries and drapes. She opened up to the power of love, which is the whole of universe, which is in every cell no matter how small or how dark. She chose to let go the weight that kept the magic, the love, at bay; at a constant speed. She let it come in and out, without fear of it filling her up and losing the parts of her which she knew were essential and without resentment for it leaving to whom and what ever it may go. Her sisters ever extended arms and open hands. It was the same as the wheat seeds pushing their way through the dark and into the sunlight. And was exactly the same as the elder women sending the sun below the horizon and with the same grace, going gently into that long black night. And it was exactly the same as her heart valves opening, her mouth opening, her legs opening. It was all opening and receiving and giving.

They were both now crying deeply into each others ruined shoulders. The burses, all purple and brown and blue, pressed against each other with a deep aching numbness. It was in that moment, in the pressing together of their bodies that she gave up all the expectations, all the jealousy and all the anger that caused her so much grief. She never felt as free, as light, as she did then in that cold dark cell. Their weeping reverberated off the stone walls and rattled the wrot iron bars.

Susan felt her sister’s fingers shift along her back, spreading, elongating and becoming cooler. They grew and flattened until the draped across the entirety of her and trialed to the floor. They were softer and stronger. In fact, the whole of her body shifted this way. Her neck starched out from her shoulders and became thinner. Her body became fuller and covered in a downy white feather coat. She could feel something hard and warm, like a stones in a hot spring, press against her neck. It was pleasant against the scared flesh, where not too long a go a rope burned its way through several layers of skin leaving a ring of tissues like a bunch of fabric scrunched around her neck.

Susan withdrew from her sister’s embrace to find a great sawn before her. Its wings outstretched and encircled her. Her head resting upon her shoulders.

Because you are a Shooting Star

*Please excuse the momentary dredging up of my intestines (which is really a string of metaphors), my stomach (really a bag of similes), my pancreas (a producer of personification), and my lower organs (these are just my testicles) for your reading pleasure*

I can’t bare this anymore. I see you all false and with out direction; like the illusion that is the aura borealis which secretly wants to be a solar flare or part of the deep space nebulas. No! This is too heavy for gravity, this need. No, it’s not a need, not a want, not even a desire. It is a wish.

Like a shooting star in the night sky of my life. All hot and bright and fast for less than a moment. You are not an expedition to mars or a fleet of mining ships that extract iron ore or diamonds in meteors. These are wants, these are desires. You are just a shooting star and shooting stars are just wishes incarnate.

Not a comet are you either. Comets are my reoccurring lovers who enter my orbit, penetrating my atmospheric layers for days. Shooting stars are quick and they punch and burn up all their helium and oxygen in my nitrogen rich aura. But shows of orgasmic creation can not happen in a vacuum. No new worlds to explore are in a shooting star. No vast caverns which formed in the great blackness of space in which to play. I can not. I will not pulse my way through the empty space.

How I do wish to reach out across the universe and touch that icy hot tail, that speck of cosmic dust in process of using up everything it ever was. But it is to quick, not sustainable and my blazing iron core will never make journeys through space/time for something so fleeting.

Will you someday crash into my crust? Will it require such force that you cram a creator into my surface, a mark, a forever? Can you reach my skin and kick up green earth and bury yourself past my blushing red mantle and merge with my core? Do you have the strength to endure my gravitational field?

Perhaps not. Wishes burn too quick to have the desire to met a solid planet. They’re only cause in space is to be peaceful, glide through a void and one day, when the time is right… Pop to life with brilliance all their own. With the last atom of carbon or magnesium or phosphorus release they’re final thought: they hope someone, somewhere below was there to bear witness.