Happy New Year!

The Way of Quarry Hill

Always be loving and compassionate to children, and to animals.  Find your own creative joy and revel in it. Love deeply and fully all those whom you love.

Have mercy on this beautiful but often tormented world.

Ladybelle

Peace and Joy

Brion's and my much-beloved Tagore Poem

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,

In life after life, in age after age forever.

My spell-bound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms

In life after life, in age after age forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,

Its ancient tale of being apart or together,

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge

Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount

At the heart of time love for one another.

We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell--

Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever:

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,

The love of all man's days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,

The memories of all loves meeting with this one of ours--

And the songs of every poet both past and forever
     
               
--Rabindranath Tagore









(Brion's and my favorite poem relating to our long-lasting love)

Love and Joy... Krishnamurti

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jiddu_krishnamurti.html#SCYIVFA6hmEB47DO.99

February 8th --the birthday of my cousin David.

David Fiske, a man of energy, ability, humor and of many unknown capacities, was born on Feb. 8, 1953, in Brooklyn, NY ( I believe that was the place). He died in 1976, in what was probably an accident, in Hardwick,VT., on Thanksgiving Day.
He was alone when he died, and it has become a QH tradition to try to reach out to as many people as possible to invite them to Thanksgiving (and Christmas, too-- a difficult time of year for people alone) in order to make sure no one feels left out.

Anyway-- all our love to you,David, in memory or in reality, if you are out there "somewhere."

Love Is All Around

All seems peaceful tonight. The snow falling, falling, through the winter trees, bare of leaves except for the scented pines, seems like a restful moment outside time and a kind of benediction. I wish well to all and thoughts of peace, thoughts free from fear and sorrow, full of restful joy and love, to all of you. Then, now, and always, let there be love.

Peace!

And of course...

It is very Quakerly to do all one can to help poorer people. I am very much aware that "there but for the grace of God..."
We are all one. I still think all the things I thought when I was sixteen, I find, with a very few exceptions. Love, joy and peace are at the heart of all things, and blossom into light through creativity and compassion. This is eternal.
Thanks for reading this, anyone who did!

A Widow's Awakening by Maryanne Pope

I (Ladybelle) have just published a review of this very unusual book by an even more unusual person on Blogcritics.org.

While Maryanne's life has been different from that of we who live, and lived, at Quarry Hill, I am sure that anyone who reads her book will gain insight from it. The apparent parting of physical death comes to us all, and though we "know and feel that we are eternal," in that quote Barbara loved to use (from the Bible? From William Blake?) there is nothing that changes life so much as a death-- well, perhaps a birth does too,but we are happy, generally, when this comes, and we don't realize it. Parting -- the physical parting-- can hit us so hard, we don't know we've been hit for a long time. And yet: "To be made alive is so chief a thing, were it not riddled with parting, it were too divine." -- Emily Dickinson.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Widow's Awakening
Maryanne Pope
Pink Gazelle Productions, 2008-10

In September of 2000, Maryanne Pope, the 32-year old wife of a Calgary police officer, lost her husband, John. While out on his first night’s duty since they had returned from vacation, he answered a call to what appeared to be a break-in, stepped through a false ceiling, and hit his head after falling nine feet. Also 32, he was brain-dead.
The couple had visited Disney World, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, along with other vacation spots of the Western United States. While they had a good time — one Maryanne would remember, as John lay dying, as “awesome” — the reader is at once aware of tensions between the two.

Maryanne, called Adri in her nonfiction novel, A Widow’s Awakening, felt that her husband, called Sam in the book, wanted to be in control of her, and that she always had to be careful not to start a fight with him. She could not accept that he had decided not to bring children into the world, which saddened her immensely. On his side, John/Sam seems to have been frustrated with Maryanne’s procrastination; like many who aspire to writing, she found it difficult to actually sit down and write. That she had to work as a police report typist, she felt, held her back from fulfilling her creativity. John could not understand why she didn’t just write whenever she could.

John, for his part, also had an ambition; he wanted to become an undercover police agent. He had not yet been able to attain this wish, and that may also have been one of the irritants between them.
Yet, in the odd realm of unknowing, but all-knowing coincidence that can precede unexpected parting through death, Maryanne and John were fortunate. They had a final chance to talk about their issues with each other, and to choose to speak the truth. On their return from the States, they had an argument over whether to do as Maryanne’s mother wished and hold Thanksgiving at their house. Maryanne had agreed; John was angry and didn’t want to, since they both had to work that weekend. That argument sparked a chance for them to talk. Just before he went on his final night’s shift (that last farewell, that we never can know is the last farewell), they exchanged truths and agreed to be more honest and open with each other.

Maryanne must have the details of this final conversation emblazoned on her mind and heart when she wrote A Widow’s Awakening. She told John that her great fear was that she would wake in 20 years to find she had never written anything. His answer was not soothing: it was one I recognized immediately from my own husband’s response to such statements. It is no doubt similar to one many women are accustomed to hearing, if they are married to purposeful men. He responded that her fear was probably true — but that she must realize that if this happened, she would have created the situation herself; it would be her own decision.
While harsh, his answer was a spur to Maryanne’s determination to write something meaningful. Since it was his last word to Maryanne, whom, in spite of all differences, he clearly admired and loved, it affected her tremendously. He’d often told her he wished he could figure out a way for her to write. “You’re the smartest person I know.”
John went out on patrol that night. When Maryanne arose the next morning, before she learned of John’s fall, she determined to rise early and work on her writing. Tired, hating to face the job she wished she didn’t have to return to, she (not surprisingly) found herself unable to get out of bed early enough to write. She was angry with herself as she went in to her job.
But that morning was the last moment of a normal life of marriage, with all its frustrations and supports, for Maryanne and for John. Though the truth became apparent to Maryanne in the strange slow way people perceive the worst things that can happen to them, John was gone.
When Maryanne/Adri arrived at work, her supervisor told her John had fallen. With her supervisor by her side, she took a call from John’s inspector, and found that John was in the best local trauma unit. Then she began to realize that the "fall" she had envisioned as a broken arm was much more life-altering.
The scenes in the hospital are both fascinating and painful to read because they ring true to a dreamlike state human beings enter when they are in the presence of the unnatural, lengthened state between life and death science has created — life in death, a coma, a body sustained by machines. Maryanne felt that she could feel John squeeze her hand as she held it. Who would not feel that the other is trying to communicate in some way? Who would not do all they could to call back the lover, the father figure — the deeply beloved husband?
While for me, at least, the present-tense writing throughout the book is at times unsettling (really a matter of one’s taste), it is the correct tense in which to describe many moments, such as the ones in the hospital. Maryanne sits with John in shock, fear, misery and the desire to evade the finality of loss. From time to time, especially if she puts her head on his chest, he takes a deep, shuddering breath and seems to react to the contact. Maryanne evidently never had this odd physical reaction fully explained to her, and reading it, I wanted to know more about it. Was it simply a response of the nervous system, or a coincidence, something that would have happened even if she had not touched him? Or was more than his body responding? Since, as the doctors told her, the white and gray matter of the brain had already mingled — “he’s already gone ” — probably it was just a sense-reaction common to coma patients.
Yet, anyone who has lost someone in this way knows the deep, deep longing for any sign whatsoever from the suddenly lost focus of love. Only the love relationship matters any longer — indeed, the nature of love itself. Any argument, any strife, abruptly vanishes like Prospero’s” cloud-capp’d towers.”

In a purity of feeling known possibly only at one other time, a baby’s birth, we see the real love that is at the core of all the squabbling and making-up we usually call love.
It is the real nature of love that sustains Maryanne through the book, through the year to come — the loss, the pain, the strange discovery that John’s pension (I doubt that ours in the United States are this sensible and generous) and other sources of money, such as insurance, will allow her to live without having to work.
John’s death has bought her the freedom she had just told him she needed to write. He has given her that way to do what she wants to do. And yet, the prize that every writer longs for is at the expense of the life of her beloved husband. This is a source of deep distress for Maryanne, and could only have made the long first year more difficult in many ways. But the creative entity creates, and Maryanne used the time and money well. She produced not only this book, but also many other projects, now available at her site, Pinkgazelle.com. Other women might have simply given up and wallowed in grief and despair.
After a distressing discussion with the hospital’s transplant team as to whether Maryanne would allow John’s organs to be transplanted into dying and ill persons who desperately needed them (she allowed his organs to be used, though not his skin) — after the immense grief of John’s parents combined with the (to his wife) odd rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church such as anointing his body with oil, and after Maryanne’s final farewell to him — John died.
Maryanne felt enraged at John’s Greek Orthodox Christianity, since his faith had refused him the right to be buried in that church unless he married within it — which Maryanne, a Lutheran, would not do. Suddenly, the church changed its mind and agreed to allow Sam/John to be interred under its auspices.This seems to be the moment when anger becomes a tool to help Maryanne/Adri through the strange and terrible time ahead.
There is one odd moment that I am sure happened, but could use more explanation. She states that when speaking to his parents, she had the sense that “one day I will be all right again.” I would have liked to know more about this — how she knew this at that moment. Most likely it was her life force rising to say, “you are not the one who is dying.” As far as the book goes, the phrase seemed to come at an awkward moment, and to take a little of the creative tension out of it. But as this book has just entered its second printing, any such criticism is probably moot. Many people have clearly found A Widow’s Awakening to be a source of support and help to them. The sometimes jokey tone of the book, occasionally a little jarring to someone who is mostly a reader, not a mourner (at the moment), apparently doesn’t detract from this support. In fact, it probably helps.
When John had died, Maryanne went home, to sorrow, confusion, anger, and fear, and that persistent sense many have known, that John was both present and absent. Her brother came to stay with her and look after her. Thoughts spun through her mind. Reading her account of the first night — the first several — I thought it remarkable that she was able to sleep at all without some kind of strong sedation.
It was a pleasure to read that this Canadian family and circle of friends had the sense and unity to make sure that someone was with their sister and daughter, and friend, each night, for quite a long time, till she finally was able to manage on her own. For an American, I am afraid this can be a surprise. Though many families would do this, it may not be something every family, with our busy, business-focused lives, would necessarily feel able to offer for more than a night or two. It becomes clear that her circle of relatives and friends were concerned about her sanity, for good reason.
Very soon, Maryanne found herself thinking all sorts of bizarre thoughts, such as the sudden idea that she was the Second Coming of Christ. She saw signs and portents everywhere and kept thinking she would probably be dead (though not a suicide) in seven months. She had all sorts of thoughts that clearly alarmed some of those to whom she expressed them. Many different ideas do present themselves to the newly bereaved. It is a kind of thinking in some ways outside of space and time, for we try to follow the lost loved one as far as we can. All sorts of “magical thinking” can also come to the rescue at these times, as though the human psyche needs a special soothing syrup for the loss of a loved one. Or do we actually awaken — to a deeper realization, a farther vision, and the sense that we are greater and more remarkable than we believe?
I think Maryanne was right in a way. She was Jesus for herself; she saved herself through her writing. And, as she states in another passage, “Maybe Sam (John) is Jesus.” For her, he also was. She resurrected herself, and the sense that he was always nearby obviously sustained her.
I wish the names had not been changed; I personally prefer that nonfiction be rooted in the truth as much as possible. Yet one quickly becomes accustomed to the “undercover names.” There are some infelicitous or rough sentences, such as “Snooze was hit” on Maryanne’s alarm clock the third time she balked at getting up and writing on that final morning. One doesn’t wish to spend much time, though, picking over a book that tells so much, so honestly and without leaving out anything — even the wildest thought.
Maryanne/Adri goes as far as she can to the underworld with her lost lover and returns like Persephone when the year turns. She will never be the same, but she has begun to enable herself as a writer; unlike many who would probably be lost to grief, she has chosen to be a creative being to celebrate the life of Sam/John as well as her own true self.
I honor this woman, with whom I have communicated. I can attest that she is remarkably intelligent, as her husband said. She seems to feel somehow liberated from the exigencies of time and space, since they have done their worst. And, she has achieved a great deal other than the not inconsiderable job of writing a book. Twenty percent of the sales from the book go to the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund, which educates the public about workplace safety for workers in emergency services, and that it is a “shared responsibility.” More information about this important issue is available at jpmf.ca.

There is much more that I could say about this book, but I suggest that if it is of interest to you — if you have recently lost someone, particularly — get A Widow’s Awakening and read it. It is different than many books I have read on this topic in an elusive way; it reveals more and more of the person who wrote it as it goes on. Maryanne says that it is “how I made sense of the unacceptable.” In this way, she also gives the reader an idea of how to do the same, when this becomes necessary. John apparently realized that Maryanne was, and is, a real writer. She simply needed to have the right set of circumstances in order to let her writing arise. One can’t help but feel this: if only he could be here, in body as well as spirit, to see how well she has done!
I am sure that had he lived, had the financial stability his death provided not been available, she would have become a writer in any case. It sometimes takes more time than we think to fully bloom into the creative life.

A Widow’s Awakening is available at Pinkgazelle.com, or at Amazon.com. (# ISBN-10: 0981064302)


A Widow’s Awakening
Maryanne Pope
Pink Gazelle, 2008
Photo above is of John and Maryanne at the beach and is copyright Maryanne Pope/Pink Gazelle Productions.

This review is dedicated to the memory of my brother, William Fiske, 1954-2008, and that of my father, Irving Fiske, 1908-1990.

Article first published as Book Review: A Widow's Awakening by Maryanne Pope on Blogcritics.

Sister Wives Honeymoon Special (First Published, in a slightly different form,at Blogcritics.org)

Many TV-watching Americans (and others, I’m sure) have now seen Sister Wives on TLC, a coming-out-of-the-closet reality show about life in a fundamentalist Mormon/Latter Day Saints polygamist sect.
It seems to be unusually honest, the revelation of a way of life so different from that of conventional married life that it is, I am sure, difficult for many viewers even to imagine living in this way. ("Creepy" is an adjective I've heard a good deal when discussing the show and the concept.)

My own  life has been very little like that of the Brown family. Yet, I have a different perspective on the issue of multiple relationship:  different than that of   the Browns and also quite different from that of most  "normal" monogamists.

I’ve lived in the world(s) of polygamy and polyandry in two different communities: one a place of openness, choice, and freedom, the other a quasi-Manson-like situation of the late Sixties in which women were possessions, playthings, and servants.  I have never lived in any version of Mormonism as the Browns of Sister Wives do, but all the same I can relate to the concept of "sister wives"—both the happiness and the pain of sharing one’s lover and one's whole life with other (close, sisterly) women. In this situation, one can become very close to one's sister wives (In some cases, one is close with the “other woman” before the shared man comes along). Even today I miss my friends who were also "sister wives"—some of whom are still close friends, though there were surely times when I’d have been delighted never to have to see some of them again!

The women of the Brown family seem to find themselves caught up in very similar feelings. With characteristic honesty and an openness that makes this show worth watching, the three older wives express their feelings. They both wish to include the fourth wife and resent her at the same time, not without reason.

Kody Brown, the husband, and Robyn, his fourth wife, have just been married—not only for time but, as Latter-Day Saints believe, for eternity. In this special episode—produced after the series concluded for the season, evidently in response to the curiosity of monogamists about those who live what they call “The Principle”—the two go on an 11-day honeymoon. Robyn is young, dark-haired, and attractive despite being the mother of three by an earlier marriage, and it is clear that Kody is in love with her and as excited as a teenage boy about being alone with his present love.

She seems to understand how the other women feel, but is not really willing to alter her experience of love and marriage in order to placate them. She does, however, urge Kody to call home, to express his affection for his other wives, and to be sure to really experience that affection. I thought it was sensible and endearing of her to do so!

Kody and Robyn seem to enjoy their freedom (no kids to look after). They rent a honeymoon apartment, surf, swim, and look happy and carefree. Meanwhile, back at the ranch -- an ingeniously designed three-apartment house in which Kody spends a rotating cycle of nights with each of his wives--the  other wives, Meri, Janelle, and Christine, watch the children and talk about their fears and resentments as well as their desire to accept Robyn. They want to create a whole entity out of the various elements of the extended family.Towards the end of the show, their wish to include her and accept the change in their lives becomes far more pronounced, at least for the moment.
One has to admire the three older women, who pull no punches about their feelings. Each has been married to Kody for many years, and it is clear that they feel hurt, jealous, and abandoned. They talk about the brief honeymoons they had, and the simplicity of their weddings. They seem to realize they are not as societally attractive as Robyn, yet each has a certain rare beauty, the beauty of women who like other women and share their lives together in a way that is helpful to each and, unfortunately, too little known by women who live in a one-woman-one-man relationship.

While they do deeply believe that the inclusion of other women is a religious act-- a way to make the love they feel for one another and their husband greater and open the doors of heaven to them all-- they are also  clearly upset and jealous in an earthly sense. Second wife Janelle puts it bluntly. “I perceive any time he spends with her as cutting into our time. It’s the fact that he’s focused somewhere else for 11 days, and on one particular person for 11 days. That’s frustrating me.” Janelle, a strong-looking, earthy woman, explains that her relationship with Kody has never been “romantic,” rather the closeness of fond friends. (Still, they have many children, including a newborn!) Yet, an 11-day honeymoon is taking too much away from the family, she feels.

Meri, Janelle, and Christine, it seems, never had as much time alone with Kody as Robyn. I remember well the sense that a period of ten or eleven days made a relationship seem like a singular and special one. In one communal situation in which I lived, the “Ten-Day Marriage” was popular for a time—a way of getting to have a sort of mini-monogamy with someone to whom one was deeply attracted. By spending ten or so nights together, it was possible to more deeply explore the quality and potential of the relationship—or conversely, to become tired of the person with whom one had so desired those ten days. Though this wasn't always the case by any means, sometimes it was thought a way to “run out,” get over, a particular relationship.

I found myself wondering if the other wives could be a little afraid to complain to Kody (or to Robyn). To say they don't like having her around would be not only anti-Principle and unwelcoming.  but has the potential to very quickly drive Kody further away from them. Still, it is clear they  feel they are uncertain how they will get back to a more reasoned, more fully shared life. Will each of them feel as though Kody (of whom one person I know said, "What a jackass"), would really rather be with Robyn than with any of them when their new life settles down to business as usual?
There is no question that multiplicity has its place in nature. In one amusing passage, Kody and Robyn visit the San Diego Zoo, where a sincere tour guide shows them a group of rhinos, and explains earnestly that three or so females will “hang out together,” and will only find a use for the male when the time comes to mate. Robyn and Kody look both justified and barely able to contain themselves, overwhelmed with laughter.

As the Brown family has put itself in a difficult position by appearing in this show—I have read that they are under investigation for bigamy—I cannot help but wonder what made them wish to expose themselves in this way. The desire for 15 minutes of fame? Possibly money to help keep their enormous family fed and housed?

I see in Kody Brown’s eyes a kind of zealous stare to which I am not a stranger. Perhaps he—and I am not saying that he doesn’t believe in every aspect of his religion—feels a publicity-hound drive to display his family's life to the public, a drive which clearly the wives share, to one extent or another.
Possibly they believe that by doing this, they will be able to alter the state of polygamous families, to bring on a lawsuit that will validate their lifestyle. And--as Rosa Parks could attest-- sometimes this kind of action does bring on change.

One more word: I constantly felt, watching Sister Wives, that the three other wives, despite Kody’s hopped-up, hyper assurance that he loves them, are very insecure. They talk a great deal about the time they will spend with him, the substance of their own personal relationship with him. But is more than a little like having a relationship with Jesus (in that he's not around in the flesh all that much)?  Is the reality of a marriage with him still a reality?
The reality of marriage to many men can be, unavoidably, that youth and beauty are the bottom line of romance. Does Kody Brown love his other wives still as lovers, or more as security-figures, mothers of his children? (I appreciate and admire  that the Browns say that their  children have the right to do whatever they want when they grow up, and not to be forced to marry anyone they don’t wish to marry. This makes their life-style a lot more palatable, certainly to me.)

Do the other wives feel--they  seem to, especially Meri-- that their relationship with him is not the same as his relationship with Robyn? Meri, wife #1, tells him bluntly over the phone that they are unhappy with the long honeymoon and the entire situation.
Kody wants Robyn to have the experience of being with him alone; he wants to be with her alone, too—and he seems to believe that the tension surrounding his marriage to Robyn is normal, an unavoidable transition that comes with taking a new wife. And perhaps this is true. They probably do need some time alone together.

I cannot help but feel that real love should include everyone in the relationship, no matter how many that relationship contains. Do Kody’s wives even have a choice about what he does? Could any of them say, “We can’t handle another wife?” It’s unclear what the story is, though Meri apparently suggested Robyn to Kody as a possible fourth wife. The group of Browns has spoken of the marriage as being a “democracy,” but is it really? (I hope so.)

They come to the conclusion that Robyn needed 11 days‘ honeymoon and that it is “selfish” of them to have wanted him not to spend so much time with Robyn, but the situation still feels tense. The other wives say they understand that Robyn “needed” the 11-day honeymoon…yet it must seem to some of them, at least, that she got much more than any of them did (none had what might call a lavish honeymoon).

One hopes that all the wives feel they are getting what they need from this relationship. Robyn urges him to make sure he loves all his wives—that this gives her a sense that he will always love her. I can understand loving more than one person; and I am sure that the love they all have for one another is real. If only the women could have other husbands: and why not? (At one point during the series, Meri, whose 20th anniversary with Kody it is, speaks of her loneliness and jealousy. She says, in essence, “How would you like it if there were another man?” Kody blows up and says that the idea of her another husband is “vulgar.”) Due to their religious beliefs, they won’t have other men in their lives. The best hope one may have for the family is that all of the Browns will be able to blend and support one another. Love conquers all!


Is it interesting? Yes—at least for some, certainly for me. I want to know more about this story, and will go on viewing the show if it renews for another season—despite my husband’s saying “How can you watch that stuff?” (Yes, I have only one husband. I watch a lot of stuff, including Say Yes to the Dress and, my favorite three shows, House, MD, Mad Men, and In Treatment.

I look forward to seeing how things develop in this universe, the world of real, honest-to-goodness Big Love. I am very well aware that I am writing here about real people who have a life together, children who are brothers and sisters, and thoughts and feelings. Their story is fascinating, and I wish them well…and hope, to be sure, that for their kids' sake, they avoid trouble with the law for having been so honest about the truth of their lifestyle.

Sister Wives Honeymoon Special aired Sun., November 21, 2010 on TLC