tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43030030747417177952024-03-05T03:32:08.245-05:00The Mouth of the RiverEmily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.comBlogger176125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-31398017652573368522019-09-02T11:42:00.003-04:002019-09-02T11:42:47.132-04:00Made Holy: Essays <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Made Holy: Essays</i>, is now available from <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820355993/made-holy/" target="_blank">UGAPress</a>, <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780820355993" target="_blank">IndieBound,</a> <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/made-holy-emily-arnason-casey/1131282590?ean=9780820355993" target="_blank">Barnes&Noble</a>, or <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/made-holy-emily-arnason-casey/1131282590?ean=9780820355993" target="_blank">Amazon</a>!<br />
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So many of these essays began here at this blog, rising out of the moment I occupied, the feelings that flooded me, that brooded and swirled through the landscape of memory. We become ourselves through stories and it takes years to shape them, years of becoming. So much gratitude to all who travel this road with me. Hope you enjoy the book!<br />
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<span 22px="" font-size:="" font-style:="" italic="" left="" text-align:="" white="">"Made Holy satisfies a reader’s longing, quenches a thirst for beauty won from suffering, or peace from travail. Here is Emily Arnason Casey’s life, or parts of it, but more, here is her art made of words that refer to and call back and make sense of her life, which is a life, like all lives, rife with struggle and disappointment and lasting memories of pain, all of which she explores with a gentle nostalgia and unrestrained love. The essays here ultimately bring light and goodness, hope and joy, all synonyms for the holiness we all seek." ---</span><span style="color: white; font-size: 19px; text-align: left;">Patrick Maden, author of</span><span style="color: white; font-size: 19px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 19px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Sublime Physick </span><span style="color: white; font-size: 19px; text-align: left;">&</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 19px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> Quotidiana</span></div>
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<span white="">Lyrically driven, vivid, fragmented prose form the pulse of this moving debut collection on the American family. Entwined by the narratives of generations, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Made Holy</em> tells the story of love, loss, and addiction. Emily Arnason Casey employs the lyric imagination to probe memory and the ever-shifting lens of time as she seeks to make sense of the disease that haunts her maternal family tree and the alchemy of loss and longing.</span></div>
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<span white=""><br /></span><span white="">The lakes of her childhood in Minnesota form the interior landscape of this book, a kind of watery nostalgia for something just beyond her reach:</span><span white="">“I know this feeling,” she writes. “We travel along the surface of time, and then suddenly the layers give way, and we are in another year, another body, another place.”</span></div>
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<span white=""><br /></span><span white="">Casey’s willingness to honestly examine the past and present with contemplative lyricism offers fresh perspective and new understanding. In electric moments that are utterly relatable, she weaves a tale of love and commitment to the truth of her experience despite the incredible desire to keep alive a legacy of secrets. Like the mullein plant she invokes in the final essay, these essays form a kind of “guardian to the lost.”</span></div>
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-10646936988309088582018-10-10T10:41:00.001-04:002018-10-10T10:46:37.705-04:00Tiny Gods <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
I.<br />
A bird at the window is a tiny god<br />
heart soiled, still beating, limp yet<br />
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breath of this late summer<br />
bloom, heat of autumn turned fire<br />
<br />
as though she's drunk herself<br />
into late night oblivion<br />
<br />
from human suffering and ordinary pity<br />
at the window, red brown golden flicker.<br />
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No it is not death but some longing<br />
for youth, some greed of soft thighs--<br />
<br />
stay, don't go into that cold night<br />
body snapped shut with winter and age.<br />
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<br />
II.<br />
I woke to dreams of death<br />
and now alone, the bird at my window<br />
<br />
god of hope and lost dreams--<br />
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come back all of you<br />
come back.<br />
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III.<br />
Turn inward<br />
when the breath gets lost<br />
<br />
your tea and eyes without screens,<br />
device-less, your body in the woods of gold,<br />
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believe in the sacred ordinary<br />
that this poem and this day<br />
<br />
need not be<br />
more than a reprieve<br />
<br />
a breath like fire as we turn<br />
and go into this long battle.<br />
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-7889282013570925812018-07-09T17:46:00.000-04:002018-07-09T18:42:16.138-04:00Swim<div>
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How does one choose this page over the cool water of the lake, the boy whose legs have already grown longer than you ever imagined, his love of swimming?</div>
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How does one choose this page over the heat of summer roads where my feet pound over dirt and gravel, the trees bend and bow as I pass the blueberry patch, smell of pine woods, dry and hushed, sweat in the crook of my back, nape of neck?</div>
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How does one choose this page over the cry of my little boy, blonde haired, nearly old enough now to fill hours alone but not quite. Leaning into boyhood yet still babyfaced in the way that squeezes me?</div>
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How does one choose this page over the news scrolled out, the quick flick of words left that speak to those who already believe you, the easy labor of self congratulatory sentiment and rage, re-tweet, re-share, like, like? </div>
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In the morning I sleep for as long as I can; sleep is the luxury I want most to indulge. The day rolls out in ways that make me think it might go on forever. I sit with the boys on the dock while they eat toast and jump in the lake. I try a couple of yoga poses. M and I discuss which thing we like best: this dinosaur or this dinosaur or this miniature glass eagle. I say I like the dinosaur with the head painted blue and yellow. And red too, he points out. His backpack is filled with tiny toys: cars, Legos, dinosaurs, people, animals like the tiny turtle hatching from an egg he insisted I buy him in South Carolina, little ponies with manes he snipped short. His favorite games involve asking questions, guessing, and deciding which thing we like best. Also, baseball, chess, and Candy Land. </div>
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W runs down the dock and jumps in. The shallow water reaches the middle of his belly. He walks towards the beach and climbs from the water, then runs again, jumps. Repetition comforts and pleases us. I notice this most in children. </div>
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I think of the book I began last summer. The women, the boys, the field, the mountain. It becomes one of those days that I start to feel like a phony. One of those days ripe with longing. The longing is for the writing. I know this now, perhaps for a long time I didn't. But it seems more poetic that it embody something else: the split-wood ache in the middle of my chest that marks the ephemeral, the beauty of my fawn-like boy, his red hair, his ease in certain moments reminds me that he is weary and unsure in others. The long stare of my husband that seems to travel a lifetime and ask me what the hell I am doing, how will he ever survive me? </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj7Wx2JOfAFXP7TBYaVAM720KLBrtiG_SIKTswvDpHeUnlmpNorBk4JSZxIsQN2aBIDPcjYq6nHpZ419hwv5FURT6d0-VT6AmE3ojTvdKibrIwcBmqHD-xM-koz8Pz57byvm43eILm-7Y/s1600/IMG_2858.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj7Wx2JOfAFXP7TBYaVAM720KLBrtiG_SIKTswvDpHeUnlmpNorBk4JSZxIsQN2aBIDPcjYq6nHpZ419hwv5FURT6d0-VT6AmE3ojTvdKibrIwcBmqHD-xM-koz8Pz57byvm43eILm-7Y/s320/IMG_2858.JPG" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swimming</td></tr>
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***</div>
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I think of Lana Del Rey, <i>I want money, power and glory</i>, she sings, and then, <i>I wanna take you for all that you got</i>. There is something about her lyrics that strike me as both funny and darkly true. I don't find her ironic even when she sings,<i> I fucked my way up to the top</i>. But I smirk.<br />
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I listened to <i>Ultraviolence</i> this year. I found the CD in our car, left by my husband years ago, and played it on my weekly commute to work. It soothed and riled me. Something about her strikes me as both authentic and delightfully insincere, almost as though her deep sincerity about wanting money and power and glory rings authentic. It reminds me of the way I learned to ask if I was bad, ugly, dumb, etcetera, in a million different ways, each meant to elicit comfort -- no, of course you are not bad, you are beautiful, you are true.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcP437mmeyg1589XIEoUoU3JzKrtZhwrQFH6W4OII4Xl8u76zQI4NEKzrIayfhr-_HQpGwtJdaXWi1L7gbXA7xpruW3ERv7S8ntrcGTY7RLN958J_s0TSvc3eoQPzn0x_cnVrn9HelLQc/s1600/IMG_2633.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1575" data-original-width="1600" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcP437mmeyg1589XIEoUoU3JzKrtZhwrQFH6W4OII4Xl8u76zQI4NEKzrIayfhr-_HQpGwtJdaXWi1L7gbXA7xpruW3ERv7S8ntrcGTY7RLN958J_s0TSvc3eoQPzn0x_cnVrn9HelLQc/s320/IMG_2633.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American Boyhood</td></tr>
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How does one choose the page over long mornings spent with coffee on the porch, in the living room, with a book? How does one choose the page over late nights together talking about nothing, but in the best way possible. How does one choose?<br />
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I have been looking elsewhere for months, years even. Finishing another writing project and avoiding the new work I want to do. But today on the dock with M, his pale skin flashing almost blue and translucent, his kindness, I wanted to describe him, to make him with words in order to understand him and me and this moment together, and in that flash the ache grew and from that ache a weariness and then the little voice that says, you're not enough, you're not a real writer. Then this writing, this testing the waters. And now, M. has asked me to come down to the lake and swim and I said yes.<br />
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***</div>
Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-48740363295228357412018-01-13T13:24:00.002-05:002018-01-13T13:24:33.259-05:00Return to HomeThe snow billows in the field, a real blizzard. We arrived last night after three days on the road with my mom, the children pushing me to the edge of madness. Our last hours driven in fog, thick rain, with temperatures about to drop. The children screamed profanities at each other, as I prayed for our safe return.<br />
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Home. Comfortable, easy, the space that I expand in. My silence owned here. Much lies ahead for this weekend, and this year, but this snow has my heart. Tiny birds flutter at the pinecone filled with peanut butter and bird seed that we hung on the porch in December. I watch them peck once, twice for seed, then lift. The sound of the wind bellows through this house as though we lived on a prairie and I wonder over its structure, the strength of it's bones. The roof began to leak last night and Josh had a bucket out with towels. Food on the table when for our return. Fire in the fireplace, the heart of the house. The dirt and dust of it all. The children's toys and stink bugs, the laundry and dishes and mess of a bed. All is well.<br />
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What is my hope for the new year?<br />
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To be tender and patient. To play. To go slow. To be outside in the quiet of the forest, mountains, woods. To make fires and sip tea in front of them. To make laughter and love. To miss the pine forest and the lake until I return. To wonder without answering. To listen.<br />
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xoxo<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-60205774005008899222017-12-03T09:50:00.001-05:002017-12-03T09:50:46.035-05:00O' Christmas Tree<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheGSCRpw-3EiVxnD4psQTbQN1Shqrf5vz2eu9PTa0e7bRfTECtBmyUtxf2BV6C0pzsKumSS6zp5iZxY7Uc83tvpOfdBMXDuOuatFWufkTP21JqWGHQXycy-nmUeKuznue8W7bnJZ2xXIQ/s1600/MoWill2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheGSCRpw-3EiVxnD4psQTbQN1Shqrf5vz2eu9PTa0e7bRfTECtBmyUtxf2BV6C0pzsKumSS6zp5iZxY7Uc83tvpOfdBMXDuOuatFWufkTP21JqWGHQXycy-nmUeKuznue8W7bnJZ2xXIQ/s400/MoWill2017.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brothers<br /></td></tr>
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we cut the tree from the field adjacent the house</div>
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with a long armed saw and our two boys</div>
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one lay in the grass and we said he is baby Jesus</div>
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the other walked off with his father</div>
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they both fear the woods,</div>
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at night I tell the bedtime story</div>
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two boys lived in a house in the woods</div>
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no, they cry, out of the woods not in</div>
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on the edge, I ask,</div>
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okay</div>
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everyone wore red but me</div>
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and there was no snow</div>
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I have been thinking about last times</div>
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endings </div>
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there will be a last time </div>
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for all things here</div>
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some of mine:</div>
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a last baby birthed</div>
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a last drink</div>
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but who can say? neither are well remembered </div>
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in the log cabin we situate the tree</div>
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with tradition</div>
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in the same corner it has </div>
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stood since 1978 </div>
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play Christmas songs</div>
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make dinner -- the children refuse</div>
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the next day alone</div>
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I brim with fear</div>
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looking at the tree </div>
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and the news</div>
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it's a white pine that might have grown </div>
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up to one day crack the sky</div>
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-91135976796614015652017-11-26T09:20:00.000-05:002018-10-10T10:21:16.617-04:00New Work <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: left;">My essay "Self Portrait" at The Rumpus </span></h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrC2CA_U-Dlh2XYDS3IYLtzGKBI9k2M2ZdlItw3zaAse6AefOXG6C07GOydDvLST7hJO_zcNZeeaQCpWgk-Hd3fLoMmk-jbxqxArKShoq2jlU5U9ts6n7S1oi6WhwOSSApja1MPkMf8E/s1600/francesca-woodman3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrC2CA_U-Dlh2XYDS3IYLtzGKBI9k2M2ZdlItw3zaAse6AefOXG6C07GOydDvLST7hJO_zcNZeeaQCpWgk-Hd3fLoMmk-jbxqxArKShoq2jlU5U9ts6n7S1oi6WhwOSSApja1MPkMf8E/s320/francesca-woodman3.jpg" title="" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francesca Woodman</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Self-Portrait in Red #2:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Tell me, what does a woman do with her anger, with her rage, or with her shame over being made subservient, secondary, object? Where in her body does it live? How many times can she circle back?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">She sees herself through the eyes of a man looking at her looking at him, a self divided. What she cannot tolerate about the world she buries there, in her body.</span></div>
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<a href="http://therumpus.net/2017/11/voices-on-addiction-self-portrait/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">read more...</span></a></div>
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-91732109722646641972017-08-19T13:25:00.002-04:002017-08-19T13:25:32.503-04:00New Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We moved into the log cabin in Orwell this week.<br />
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Last night we drove in after three days on the road from Minnesota. I took the boys for a walk in the field; our neighbor cuts a path for us with his industrial lawn mower. Along the path wild apple trees grow, some with dead limbs, others with low reaching branches I think the deer must eat from. There are places where the grass has been pressed down by the warm body of animals. I think of a mother and twin fawns as I wade through the long meadow to reach the tree and pick the mean, sour fruit the boys insist on tasting. The wet grass soaks my cotton shoes and W. whines for me to pick him up. I carry him a bit. We find wild grapes and berries, milkweed and burdock. M. asks where the bees have gone. In June hundreds swarmed the blooming locust trees and we stood beneath them and listened to the collective whir.<br />
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The house is filled with cobwebs. Though my mother-in-law came to water the plants, it looks like no one has been here in a dozen years. Spiders everywhere. We walk through the rooms and try to envision the way we might make each, what each will be. The boys will only play in the main rooms, even if we create other play spaces. They insist on remaining close. They also don't yet want to venture out alone. But today is our first day here. I arrange my desk before the window of our spare bedroom. It looks out onto a field and woods. I am grateful for the few pines that grow here; they remind me of Minnesota. Home. Though I have been in Vermont for over a decade, Minnesota remains home to me. I don't know if it's the stubborn insistence in me that keeps looking westward, longingly, or if truly the inroads of the landscape of home form a map of my heart. I long for it. Today, I long for the road where I run, for the path through the woods. The smell of thick pine, the past ripe berries along the path, the late summer blooms. But if I stayed there I would never write a thing; longing has always been my swan song, my pulse, my disease and my path. Without it, what would I be?<br />
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Quietly, ever so quietly, I have been planning my next book. This summer I finished editing (a two year process for me) my first book of essays and began the long road of sending it out to small presses and independent publishers. For three years I have thought of returning to fiction and writing a novel. It feels overwhelming and well, terrifying if I'm really honest with myself. It has something to do with the length and my desire for a sense of constant ending, a sense of completion. But as we move into what is undoubtably going to be a rather different phase of our life, no longer in a neighborhood, living in a rural community on hundreds of acres of my husband's family's land, I feel the pull towards these stories again. I long for the deep inward solace of imaged worlds. More then ever I long for other worlds, the places where I can make peace with the tunneling ache of the world and its stunning beauty.<br />
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What do I fear? I fear working for years on a novel that amounts to nothing. That never meets the mark. With essays or even short stories, you might write a few bad ones, but you can easily let them go and move on to the next one. As I write this, listening to the fly stuck in the window, and the birds outside, I see clearly it is really only a challenge of the mind. And now the fly is free of the window and takes another path and now its back on the window. I worry too that I should not speak of the work I'm doing as it sometimes destroys the mystery and the mystery is like the engine of the writing, the longing, the seeking. One longs and then seeks.<br />
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<br />
J. takes the boys to the park at the school in town and then grocery shopping. I find my boots and walk out into the field. It's warm. The whir of the bees surrounds me. I realize they are feasting on the golden rod. I stand and listen and the sound vibrates. I catch a Monarch, just hatched, drying its wings. Up down, up down. The wind blows and I cannot tell you what an open field does for the soul. Like the lakes I love in Minnesota, the space of distance sets us loose, mends us.Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-46599265243418561172017-08-07T13:33:00.000-04:002018-07-09T20:51:30.960-04:00To The Newlyweds<span style="color: white; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 11pt;">Once she left you pearls</span><br />
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">dropped like apples from
a tree <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">and he offered gold as
soft as leaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">There will be days <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">when you wonder, soul
stretched, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">words urgent <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">shared in haste<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">questions dust to dreams,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">but those are good days
too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">Let all the days be good
days, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">make a study of your
beloved,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">a sand castle for his
sorrows, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">light given in darkness takes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">your whole being<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">it is not easy <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">this work of love—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">In the morning, the sun <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">comes through the kitchen
window, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">cuts across the floor,
warm as bread. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">He stands with hands <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">cupped around steamy
coffee<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">she washes a dish, sets
it to dry, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">before turning, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">--I see her shake the
water from her hands <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">and his soft smile-- <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">it will be the sun on her
shoulders <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">you covet or his hands on
the cup<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">as it reaches his lips
and shakes sleep free, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">you think of all day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">So too this vow of love, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">as ordinary as rain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">as sacred as morning, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">let it be the road home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">let it carry you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;">August 5, 2017<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="border: none; mso-border-shadow: yes; mso-padding-alt: 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> -for Sigrid & Aaron on their wedding </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-83845186147357910502017-01-19T15:34:00.001-05:002017-01-19T17:17:43.555-05:00In Mourning All day I have felt the slick animal of depression at my throat. It's deep January in Vermont and the snow has not kept, the ground is wet and sloppy, the sun is gone, gray hovers. When I cannot see the sky my spirit sleeps; I feel a sense of inner breathlessness. Some of my favorite skies are bright blue afternoons on the coldest days of winter in Minnesota, and, though rarely, in Vermont.<br />
<br />
Inauguration Day looms. The People's Billionaire who has swiftly put together a cabinet of like billionaires and appointed individuals who have no tether to the reality of the people of this country, no concern for equality, or are out and out crooks, will take the oath as our nation's leader. How this came to be we can't quite say; the irony is hardly worth mentioning. <br />
<br />
Many are headed to DC to protest and to march on Saturday. I plan to join in a protest march at my state capital if I can muster the energy, but, in truth, my voice feels quelled into a deep silence. I long for distance and seclusion, for broad swaths of snow-covered lakes and forest, for the heat of an open fire, for the smell of smoke, for an intensity of weather that might offer a sense of reality closer to the body, to the raw edges of being, and too, away from the hustle and bustle of commerce and capitalism, consumerism and stuff, more and more stuff... the awful drain of daily life in America.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0TwUwON4Nca8W71bSNnkkSyVEyaRJUR46nb60NJgcPKn7sytw8AP8j0n70kelyCg1bc8amC8aWr1-ojzTPwCNUnWDyzgxJvmfEfFAVG1AvTFKIDMSy3OsZJL58y_FIhyphenhyphenDp0VO9DtvEI/s1600/cphxm61ob_0-paul-itkin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0TwUwON4Nca8W71bSNnkkSyVEyaRJUR46nb60NJgcPKn7sytw8AP8j0n70kelyCg1bc8amC8aWr1-ojzTPwCNUnWDyzgxJvmfEfFAVG1AvTFKIDMSy3OsZJL58y_FIhyphenhyphenDp0VO9DtvEI/s400/cphxm61ob_0-paul-itkin.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Itkin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But there is another part of this I think. A part of me feels so inadequate as a political voice that I don't want to try to shape a message... into what, anyway? Who would I be speaking to? Or, rather, to whom? Who would be listening? What would be the point? Other activists have told me that they know what to do, it's time to organize. It's time to act. Some say even that this could be a great <a href="https://medium.com/@sashadavis/plan-b-the-case-for-alternative-sovereignties-f688dca555c#.q1ywbv54k" target="_blank">time of productive progressive growth and transformation</a> by creating alternative sovereignties in our communities and workplaces, with our friends and families. But the work of organizing feels overwhelming and I am humming with rage and sorrow that has a life of its own.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
___</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
Today I read a friend's blog "<a href="https://jonathankissam.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/mourning-becomes-the-left/" target="_blank">Mourning Becomes the Left</a>" about mourning the losses we feel politically. He writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I think we need to reclaim mourning as one of our practices on the Left, as a political and communal practice (or, rather, reclaim it more broadly – the incorporation of mourning is certainly one of the things that gives the Black Lives Matter movement such power – and in a way that allows us to mourn the defeat of our hopes as well as the loss of lives).</span></blockquote>
This rings true for me. I feel I am mourning this defeat, the loss of hope, the loss of dreams for my country. I want to be alone in the woods, in the silence from which I feel calmed. I don't want to engage and this feels bad too.<br />
<br />
<br />
The snow on the ground out the window melts and the sky catches blue around the edges. It is shapeless as though waiting.<br />
<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-7959367108762488442016-11-30T10:37:00.002-05:002016-12-01T07:05:58.788-05:00WeaponsI have been stockpiling weapons in the kitchen cupboard.<br />
Machine guns, pistols, knives, and clubs, some as long as one inch.<br />
I find them around the apartment lost by my sons<br />
from the Star Wars toys their father once collected in tribute<br />
to his own father and childhood.<br />
<br />
I used to throw them away, but now as my little cache<br />
grows, I feel as though each one points to some<br />
future crime they won't commit, in some future<br />
world that does not love weapons--holy be thy gun.<br />
<br />
Did you know, one says to me, in the Ewok Village<br />
there are no stores. The Ewoks kill animals and eat them.<br />
Then they make blankets for their babies with the fur.<br />
People once lived this way, I tell him, though he does<br />
not yet believe that people were ever another way<br />
or that we ourselves could be different.<br />
<br />
I find the two-year-old stuck under his brother's bed<br />
at 3am, crying. I have to turn his head to pull him out<br />
and then he cries for an hour and cannot settle back to sleep.<br />
Open, open, open, I whisper to myself. Stay here.<br />
Do not shut out sorrow whensoever it may come.<br />
<br />
I am reading Langston Hughes and thinking about<br />
how I fit the profile of the nice White<br />
person who never believed "that man" could win the presidency.<br />
I am the one who said it was all a joke.<br />
What does this say about me?<br />
My ignorance, my privilege, my shame, & advocacy--<br />
<br />
<i>O, yes,</i><br />
<i>I say it plain,</i><br />
<i>America never was America to me,</i><br />
<i>And yet I swear this oath--</i><br />
<i>America will be! </i><br />
<br />
In the woods beside the river, silence.<br />
Alone I feel my breath like a mountain rising up in me<br />
like the sea from which we all cleave--<br />
If I can touch this soft and open hollow<br />
If I can speak it into being and find another way<br />
If I can sing even the humble lullaby of my feet<br />
pressed against the earth, and see the birds lift in unison today<br />
If I--<br />
<br />
In the Ewok Village, my son tells me, some Ewoks have babies<br />
and they pet the babies' heads and they fall right to sleep.<br />
They sleep in baskets covered in animal fur.<br />
Do you know how to wake a baby Ewok? He asks.<br />
No. How?<br />
You tap him on the head like this and then he wakes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-36084378554749920742016-10-16T19:54:00.001-04:002016-10-16T19:54:14.794-04:00Homeward <div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman";">“All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.” </span></div>
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―Thomas Wolfe</div>
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"Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition."</div>
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<br /></div>
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---James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room</div>
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In the morning at home, this room. </div>
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Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-44629602246027741052016-10-12T10:51:00.000-04:002016-10-13T07:27:59.932-04:00The Museum Of Magical ThingsMorning in October a sky of shade and trees ablaze.<br />
My heart has been beating overtime lately.<br />
The children cry.<br />
In my mind the chrysalis begins to turn<br />
black and orange, suddenly translucent to the body of the<br />
monarch.<br />
Later and before,<br />
after the wings dried<br />
and the boys let the two butterflies slip<br />
<i>away, away</i><br />
<i>all the way to Mexico</i>,<br />
I touched a wet finger to the empty<br />
shells left on the mason jar<br />
surprised by the strength of their stems<br />
stuck fast to the glass.<br />
<br />
The ache of my head<br />
this morning. The beat of my heart<br />
fast, heavy, heaving.<br />
Fear in the red orange fire of the tree.<br />
Fear in something I cannot yet see.<br />
Breathe. Drink water. Breathe.<br />
The children are crying fat tears at the breakfast<br />
table. Slapping each other, stealing toys.<br />
Later they will sit in the bath after night fall<br />
with their father at the kitchen sink<br />
steps away, washing the dishes. They will sit<br />
in hot water and laugh and splash and be happy.<br />
<br />
I will teach my class<br />
exhaustedly, worried that I am failing,<br />
think of the way my face is breaking<br />
feel the thick web of time.<br />
Think of the thin lines also on the faces<br />
of my beloveds... sisters, friends, husband.<br />
How we had never believed they'd be.<br />
I think of the way they mark a history of expression.<br />
The way they mark inwardly, a life lived.<br />
The way they point often towards the sky.<br />
I am trying to love<br />
what I already have, what is already here<br />
what has come of this life,<br />
rather than the other stuff<br />
of the yet evolved regions<br />
of the brain. The want.<br />
Trying to love the book manuscript<br />
as it is, unruly and imperfect.<br />
All the hours endless hours spent,<br />
but ask me a question. What is the story?<br />
<br />
Later, I will lay in my bed beside my husband<br />
feet to head, head to feet. Speaking.<br />
Listening. I complain. I feel the same.<br />
Nothing changes. But everything does.<br />
In the museum of magical things or perhaps<br />
it is magical thinking in there & here,<br />
all the sun filled days, all the snowforts of the world<br />
all the stories we have told each other<br />
in our weary attempts to stave off time.<br />
In our love.<br />
Our broken, imperfect love.<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-22786031485984642132016-09-12T11:09:00.000-04:002016-09-12T11:09:40.172-04:00Wedding Poem & Morning MuseHere's the poem I read at Bess & Adam's Wedding: September 10, 2016 Camp DuNord Ely, MN<br />
<br />
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Morning. We slept late and I hurried to get the boys to daycare and preschool. It's already 11 and I have been bumbling around my email and apartment trying to get all the work done that needs doing for tomorrow's class and Wednesday's class and weekend manuscript review. </div>
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From my desk at the window I hear the geese fly over twice and the honking call makes me think of this past weekend, and my dear sister Bess getting married to her beloved Adam. The two have know each other for 10 years and have loved each other for many and have two sweet children. All together with my family in the north woods of Minnesota I was enamored with the woods and lake and love, good food and spirits and bonfires and music. Still so tired from the whirlwind trip Josh and the boys and I made to be there. But it was worth it. I adore these lovelies so much. Many blessings to them as they venture on together in life and love. </div>
Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-56805828010083301112016-04-28T21:05:00.000-04:002016-04-28T21:05:36.755-04:008 Years3 years ago I walked to the park on this date with Moses. Tonight I went with Willem, roughly the same age as Moses had been then. 3 years ago it was warm and I ware an old navy blue knit skirt but tonight the chill cut into me and Willem and I wore our winter coats and hats. Willem climbed the slide structure, laughing, runny nosed, jolly. He slid down backwards on his belly and got off by himself. He bent to kiss me from up there, though he doesn't know how to make the smacking sound and just purses his lips a little and then smiles. Just as I had 3 years ago, tonight I pointed up at the sky and said <i>clouds</i> and he looked and I felt again the wonder of the world. I held Willem as we walked home with 3 books from the little free library box--3 really good books--and then I pointed to the tiny buds of green on the trees and I told him how soon they would unfurl and whoosh, bloom, and he said <i>whoosh</i> and threw his hands up at the sky and the trees.<br />
<br />
Today, I left the boys with Ren and a pile of dirt for her garden and went to the coffee shop in Winooski, one of my favorites. I drank my coffee beside the window and read my manuscript through the end and felt the ache of wanting to make it really good, make it beautiful and the fear that it won't ever be good enough or that I won't find the time to really finish it. My biggest fear with this book, my first, is that it won't be as good as I know I can make it because I don't have enough time. I have been teaching myself to write a book these past 6 years, I suppose, while simultaneously learning how to be married and be a mother to these two magical little creatures-- Mo & Will.<br />
<br />
It is about the magic though. It is always about the magic. The magic of the work of writing comes when I can hear it singing in my ears as I work and I know I'm onto something, I'm really seeing it and intuiting it and trusting the work. It is this way also with love. We know its magic and we seek it, if we are lucky, if we remember. Even when it feels like drudgery we keep at it because we know that a little sunlight or warmth or coffee or a sweet almond croissant with a gooey middle could turn it all around and we could be in the magic again, in the joy.<br />
<br />
This is what my life is made of, what I have built it on... this magic and longing and love of creation, love of the joy I feel in seeing my children and husband and family and friends find the magic and the joy and the love.<br />
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<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-50439775295482570272016-01-16T14:39:00.002-05:002016-01-16T14:39:30.933-05:00Winter BeginsLittle loves.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDV56AyPmUgw_Y6D-9qew1ktC26aYFZcGsgaulHQWN_NMk85-2Tyr_gpCwvzkOLKl_RRjVCt8nQ0zEz7BnXJf8qr2Y0n8p_OkovCK8YdZCOYQGI1m3CxXveZtekFI9dzdHihvPeGJJ19o/s1600/IMG_9373.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDV56AyPmUgw_Y6D-9qew1ktC26aYFZcGsgaulHQWN_NMk85-2Tyr_gpCwvzkOLKl_RRjVCt8nQ0zEz7BnXJf8qr2Y0n8p_OkovCK8YdZCOYQGI1m3CxXveZtekFI9dzdHihvPeGJJ19o/s320/IMG_9373.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moses, December 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ42LvYSheJOX5jJXUR4kgARcTF70sD_sUo4fbdnylP4Cmjw_CagaKHZXQUhKwePFqsm3hSb9wfhoM2Qof3gzw7PxiqenWJ3j4aPGLzhtDthNfX3i4pCSnwwYewiGkw3z5G-YwK9UYzAM/s1600/IMG_9383.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ42LvYSheJOX5jJXUR4kgARcTF70sD_sUo4fbdnylP4Cmjw_CagaKHZXQUhKwePFqsm3hSb9wfhoM2Qof3gzw7PxiqenWJ3j4aPGLzhtDthNfX3i4pCSnwwYewiGkw3z5G-YwK9UYzAM/s320/IMG_9383.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Music in January</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPhtqVRRWKIPhi8zvCgeNYNsf8iGI5M8WqWhALZJi0dRskbJHFhACZaYBqpE9VE9yFK9yYq_baJFYfkhuNZ-xa3_uyhBX48HtRrpDdXOAx8j6hYbGRlTlYoneJjRlcnL8-uNefiFgOwPI/s1600/IMG_9390.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPhtqVRRWKIPhi8zvCgeNYNsf8iGI5M8WqWhALZJi0dRskbJHFhACZaYBqpE9VE9yFK9yYq_baJFYfkhuNZ-xa3_uyhBX48HtRrpDdXOAx8j6hYbGRlTlYoneJjRlcnL8-uNefiFgOwPI/s320/IMG_9390.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moses, Milk, & Little People</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQk-2BOaZHfPRHuqWwFXKaC-Hgnm6UBXvOC5carxuwPnYlrv3GjstwoM3MnYXruPcGeVsd0ZumyYcdSg58gPqbyl84nFkRzVnMSYvn7DdBX_y1DdYaSiqZWUlNMRzQDE8fxunPuxMq4iQ/s1600/IMG_9401.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQk-2BOaZHfPRHuqWwFXKaC-Hgnm6UBXvOC5carxuwPnYlrv3GjstwoM3MnYXruPcGeVsd0ZumyYcdSg58gPqbyl84nFkRzVnMSYvn7DdBX_y1DdYaSiqZWUlNMRzQDE8fxunPuxMq4iQ/s320/IMG_9401.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Willem, 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_IR4rLbvJliXDHiX_eSbk4BJ_7Zbd6ZFymdX6fFsz3Vl9phlCulFUHkt2HaCDsXq2CVg0iIorb_6FtXQwn-gNXEMoWC6d-70_kBzluPG9sx18xEztSanjaMPlyzXSw_vbSxrL-chskXE/s1600/IMG_9423.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_IR4rLbvJliXDHiX_eSbk4BJ_7Zbd6ZFymdX6fFsz3Vl9phlCulFUHkt2HaCDsXq2CVg0iIorb_6FtXQwn-gNXEMoWC6d-70_kBzluPG9sx18xEztSanjaMPlyzXSw_vbSxrL-chskXE/s320/IMG_9423.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Willem, 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-47654822117063724002015-12-15T20:33:00.004-05:002015-12-16T09:38:06.818-05:00Freedom From Fear & TerrorWhat is more important than freedom from fear and terror?<br />
<br />
When was it last year that I stood on the top of the play structure in the middle of the children's park and felt fear streak through me as I watched my three-year-old and 9-month-old sons, thinking, where will we take cover? The woods are too far. A shooter could pick us off so easily here.<br />
<br />
Somewhere in the south mothers march dressed in orange for gun regulations that might lead to something more or less than this agony of sending our children to schools afraid that today will be the day they're shot and killed as they sit in their tiny chairs learning letters, numbers, how to hide in a closet, become soundless.<br />
<br />
<br />
My husband is doing the dishes, a week before Christmas.<br />
<br />
Why should anyone be allowed to have a handgun, I ask.<br />
<br />
I think people should have the right to own a gun.<br />
<br />
A handgun? <br />
<br />
Not an assault rifle, he says.<br />
<br />
But handguns are the biggest killers.<br />
<br />
Look, I believe in the second amendment.<br />
<br />
What do you mean? What about it? What about it do you believe...what about it... in it...what?<br />
<br />
The water is swishing and I'm trying not to steam, not to blow a mouthful of rage, a rage I was born with, a rage that only love has ever calmed, only slow breath has ever mitigated.<br />
<br />
Somewhere in the east women are marching, yes, women, of course, women, and every one is silent and pretending they don't care--numb--it's December 14th. Three years have passed since twenty children and six teachers were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school.<br />
<br />
Women are marching and men, white men, are standing with assault rifles slung over their shoulders as they pass. Someone is saying, why are they always blaming white men. I'm speaking, telling my class, it's ideology, it's--do you understand? It's not just white men, it's how do I explain this isn't about individuals it's about a dominant world view that excludes most of us. And when I say exclusion I mean violence, that is violently suppressing most human beings.<br />
<br />
We get it. They nod. But I can't be sure and I don't understand why I keep saying this over and over. I'm not saying it's you, white man, it's not that. How do I explain?<br />
<br />
Why should anyone have a fucking gun? I'm asking my husband and he is still doing the dishes and the children are playing. The one-year-old is riding his horse on wheels back and forth across the kitchen, the three-year-old is stomping dinosaurs under the table, pretending he doesn't feel the lightening between us.<br />
<br />
I deserve to be free to live in peace. I deserve to be free of violence and fear. Don't we deserve this. This is not a question.<br />
<br />
I want to hate. I want to hide under a rock. I know, I know acutely that hate is a form of the disease, that anything that takes me away from the truth that you and I and you and I and you and you and you are of the same living force--breath of body of earth of evanescence, this impermanence, this one life--anything that separates me from you is a part of the disease.<br />
<br />
But still, I don't want to feel the truth of loss, fear, terror.<br />
<br />
Then today, in class, a student-- a white boy--speaking. He had a conversation with his grandfather about racism. He has thought about the limits of our freedoms. He is interested. He is thankful that we talked about all the hatred and the rage and the genocide and the endless violence.<br />
<br />
Baby's thrown against electric fences, humans buried alive in Sierra Leone by child soldiers, twelve-year-olds, Black men killed in the streets of Baltimore, Ferguson, Minneapolis, Chicago. A wall being built and no Muslims allowed. Women's bodies criminalized. No end to global warming. Women jailed for miscarriages and the names of the dead children and their teachers. Here they are. Read each one. Let yourself say their names aloud and let yourself feel the weight of each life on your lips, from your breath and whole being. Do not stand numb with the fear that you can't carry the burden of this sorrow. It is not true. You can. Let your voice be the wind horse of prayer. Sing.<br />
<br />
Charlotte<br />
<br />
Daniel<br />
<br />
Arielle<br />
<br />
Victoria<br />
<br />
Benjamin<br />
<br />
Dawn<br />
<br />
Caroline<br />
<br />
Josephine<br />
<br />
Rachel<br />
<br />
Jessica<br />
<br />
Anne Marie<br />
<br />
Madeleine<br />
<br />
Catherine<br />
<br />
Noah<br />
<br />
James<br />
<br />
Ana<br />
<br />
Mary<br />
<br />
Lauren<br />
<br />
Emilie<br />
<br />
Allison<br />
<br />
Chase<br />
<br />
Dylan<br />
<br />
Jesse<br />
<br />
Olivia<br />
<br />
Jack<br />
<br />
Grace<br />
<br />
Yes, yes, I choose love.<br />
<br />
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<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-43276333554634947812015-11-01T16:44:00.002-05:002015-11-01T16:48:49.231-05:00Let The World Come <br />
This fall has been a mess of work and work and children and love and inner change. Fall always strips me to a bare and raw center. I cry often, I feel the veil of death lifted and yet so close it seems to burn through me. On certain days I stare long into the faces of others and try to see how it is they move through this life, this one journey, with their loved ones or not, knowing the end. At times, I tell myself questions about death are my depressed self talking, but at other times I think they are the voice of the divine calling me back to the cradle of the world--it's radiance, it's lesson of constant change. Death reminds me of why I am here. Death cultivates change in me. It pushes me to question suffering.<br />
<br />
In my classes, I try to come prepared to be open. I try to come willing to be changed by my students and by our discussions. Last week one of my classes read and discussed Cynthia Ozick's short story "The Shawl," a story that like no other cuts through me, ravishes my heart, leaves me raw. It's a story about the Holocaust, a young Jewish mother, her 15 month-old daughter, and her 14-year-old niece. It is so well written that from it's first line you, as reader, are gripped by the inevitability of doom, of death and loss of the worst kind (if you are a mother), and the terrible realities of human cruelty.<br />
<br />
One of my students did a short presentation on the story. She is a mother of five. She asked profound questions about human experience; she voiced belief that education could change us. "If all of us in this room were the world would we do this? Would be act like the Nazis after having read this story?"<br />
<br />
We didn't know. We were not sure. We knew that more genocide had occurred since and that genocide had taken place before the Holocaust. But mostly we believed that we were good and we would not. Mostly we believed that there were "bad guys" out there and we couldn't stop them.<br />
<br />
One student raised her hand and told a story about studying the Holocaust in high school. They took a trip to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. and spoke with Holocaust survivors. One women, a survivor, said, the moment she knew there was no God was when she was standing in line beside a mother with her crying baby and an officer came up and ripped the baby from the mother and holding him by the leg smashed his head against the wall, killing him.<br />
<br />
I do not know how anyone goes on living after experiencing such things. I do not think God faults this women for not believing. But mostly, when reading about violence and cruelty I remain in a perpetual state of not-understanding. I try to stay open though I do not, as a rule, go to see movies about the Holocaust because it hurts too much. We know a great deal about this event because so much has been written and there was documentation.<br />
<br />
My class and I went on to discuss human behavior, studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the shock experiment done by Stanley Milgram. Then we watched a Ted Talk on The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. We learned his ideas about human cruelty, which he speaks of as "evil." We learned that it is from structures of power that people are turned into monsters and that the idea of a "bad apple" or a "bad guy" is not only inaccurate but it allows us to believe that evil can be contained in one body and that body is not us, it is other than us. Therefore, we aren't at risk for engaging in evil. But the studies suggest otherwise.<br />
<br />
This fall I have spent more hours grading papers and preparing for classes than I ever have in my life. I feel perpetually unprepared, I feel disconnected from my loved ones at times, I cannot keep up with my friendships, I only exercise once a week, but I have somehow felt the core of my being radiate into what is now November, the darkest month of the year and the month of my birthday. I have not written much but I have written some and I feel hopeful that there is beauty in our work and we can grow and change and grow again. I feel hopeful that my work as a teacher is a higher calling and that if I can stay present and open and alive in the classroom, I can connect with students and help them find their way.<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let the World
Come <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gather devotion,
love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gather radiance
–light of light—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gather these
leaves in the wind,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gather the
children, let them into your lap,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Into your being—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You came to
change and be changed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You came to grow
your hands open<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And you will
walk among the gods of this earth<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Until your
fingers break and you learn <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">That your hands
were never made to hold, to fist,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">They are glowing
stars, point them at the sky <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bend your knees
let the world come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let it take you.
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<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-72960305964928010062015-08-03T11:55:00.005-04:002015-08-03T12:00:34.401-04:00August Poem August again and all is quiet here<br />
everyone gone to Iceland, homeland<br />
of ancestors and family myth<br />
<br />
we lay in the white yellow sand as the sun slides,<br />
my sister and I, the children too<br />
one naked, one crawling, one burrowing in the sand<br />
<br />
the light is playing, <br />
its magic game, cut here<br />
where she and I have long lingered<br />
<br />
years have passed and<br />
with luck, more will<br />
in the quiet presence of this lake<br />
<br />
being children or with the children<br />
or old as crows--then I remember,<br />
<br />
just this morning, I watched<br />
two black birds fling and flip<br />
and peck across the beach<br />
<br />
they have all gone but us and our<br />
sister with the new baby<br />
so we swim and drink our coffee<br />
and light the sauna and talk awhile<br />
<br />
with the sweat coming down the brim<br />
of our noses, with our bodies floating out into<br />
the water, and the moon rising between the pines<br />
as we wade through the shallows back to shore<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-15974143472829436052015-05-02T09:54:00.002-04:002015-05-04T09:56:54.435-04:00Dear Spring, Let Us Make Revolution Today the coiled green buds appeared on the tree beyond the living room window. Yesterday, Wylie, my downstair's neighbor, and I sat out in the backyard with our children. I watched the two babies (mine and hers, they're a few weeks apart in age) while she filled in mulch and planted flowers. Our big boys Moses and Asa played in the dirt hole she had made for them.<br />
<br />
Feeling the grass against my body and watching the clouds float in the cradle of blue sky made me want to cry--I could feel my body opening again. Living in the north it's as if we wear two bodies, the winter bones and the summer skins. The winter body closes in, tightens in hibernation against the cold. The summer body floods out, a loose uncoiling. All my life I have felt this rhythm.<br />
<br />
As a college student I lost my mind every spring. All the winter angst pushed to the surface and I felt absolutely mad. It was a little bit thrilling. My dorm roommate and now longtime friend and I sat beside the Mississippi drinking cheap beer and probably speaking in tongues or so it seemed. Her hair in dreadlocks, mine sheared in a bob and dyed blonde.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Josh and I have been married five years now, lived in this apartment most of them. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever move. Maybe we'll just live forever in this lovely little home on a street filled with expensive houses and Moms at the park whose first question is "which house do you own?"<br />
<br />
Last night after a circus dinner (that is what dinner out with a baby and a toddler is like) with children at our local restaurant-coffeeshop-music hub, we sat for 15 minutes together on the couch. The radio on Josh's device broadcast the Red Sox game. I insisted on a foot rub. "I have been crying every morning this week about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/us/freddie-gray-autopsy-report-given-to-baltimore-prosecutors.html" target="_blank">Baltimore</a>," he told me. I look at him and feel the heavy depth of loving another person to the core. He says it's not his struggle. But I insist it is everyone's struggle. Injustice anywhere is our struggle. But when I talk about the recent suicide epidemic on the<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/us/pine-ridge-indian-reservation-struggles-with-suicides-among-young-people.html?_r=0" target="_blank"> Pine Ridge Reservation</a> in South Dakota and he says it is not for us to fix. I understand this idea, that a white person cannot help American Indians as in I cannot go there and save them from their struggle because I don't have some sort of specialized knowledge to offer just because I don't live in abject poverty or carry the weight of a history of genocide of my culture and ancestors--just because I live a privileged life, but my heart aches over the desecration of their culture, their homes, their lives.<br />
<br />
I am continuously shocked by the capacity for cruelty that we as humans possess. We. Each of us. Each human. Mind you. I teach my students and my children that every human being has both good and bad in her. But Moses wants to label the "good guys" and the "bad guys" because this is what he has learned in his short life. As do my students.<br />
<br />
This past week in my class I showed the students a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3PfSIDaLjI" target="_blank">speech Angela Davis</a> gave at a conference in Rhode Island in 2012 in which she talks about racial violence in American in connection with the Trayvon Martin killing. She says that prosecuting individuals (she is a death penalty and prison abolitionist) will not end the systemic problem of racial violence. We need to see how each murder is connected to the epidemic of racial violence in our country or we don't see the true meaning of the killings.<br />
<br />
I also watched a short clip of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2BIZy0HScM" target="_blank">interview</a> she did in prison in 1971 in which she talks about how when people ask her about acts of African American violence as protest it is absolutely incomprehensible to her because it shows that these individuals have no idea what African Americans go through on a daily basis. They live in fear. They live violence everyday. So if they react with violence it is no surprise because their lives embody an economy of violence.<br />
<br />
The history of that violence is muted out, erased unless you happen to go to college and take a history course about African Americans. We do not teach students in high school the extent to which African Americans have and continue to be terrorized and brutally murdered in this country. We do not teach the American Indian genocide. We are silent. History lost and so the suffering continues. The terror and the violence go on. People turn away and pretend there is some justification for the systemic murdering of groups of people in our country. Others are completely unaware and react with disbelief because it is too painful to sit with the truth and not find someone to blame or punish.<br />
<br />
Davis points out in her 2012 speech that because we go immediately to the punishment when someone hurts us, we skip the step where we try to understand what is happening and why. Punishment does not fix the action. Since Trayvon we have seen the murders of black Americans continue with nearly monthly reports of police brutality and murder. The media coverage is pretty good unless you are a Fox News watcher, and people are taking to the streets to protest and demand justice. The road to change is long and hard and probably never-ending, human beings do not evolve morally, contrary to historical opinion. Genocide continues though we pretend in high school history class that the Holocaust was the only one and that we will never let it happen again (to white people). The reason we don't teach it is because children would be outraged, are outraged, and would demand to know why we (the grownups) are allowing this to happen. Just as when we were young and learned of American slavery or the Holocaust we were outraged.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg672ocPFHGPg4v5jrfgLaNLonEE84YOpgdFaQnX0FgHwDVwFajxCQltbubyAz0BC6gZ5vYh62Zayq-_WjAbW0ofrz8ijcwjy6KYhpEaiU_DaGzBtk3EgC-3lVFKianp2mwR7IwEPOydew/s1600/IMG_2448.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg672ocPFHGPg4v5jrfgLaNLonEE84YOpgdFaQnX0FgHwDVwFajxCQltbubyAz0BC6gZ5vYh62Zayq-_WjAbW0ofrz8ijcwjy6KYhpEaiU_DaGzBtk3EgC-3lVFKianp2mwR7IwEPOydew/s1600/IMG_2448.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
When I think about the future of my marriage, I hope for more time alone with my husband someday. I hope for strength to guide our two boys through this complicated and beautiful world. I hope for joy and occasional days of bliss. I am not opposed to struggle. I struggle. My husband struggles. Our children struggle. Struggle is good. I want to spend more time in nature and visit more cities. I want to enjoy what I have and the smallness of my life. I want to love this moment I occupy though it is incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons. I want to give my husband the space and dignity to live his own life while in communion with me and the children. I want to find silence and cultivate mindfulness in myself. I want to be of service to the world.<br />
<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-4355423520570434182015-03-06T12:37:00.001-05:002015-03-06T12:37:16.388-05:00Pictures<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjC_rT64DietCBkkhnO4ldXdrg0J2veSSk7SQ-BMbCMBpI-yDnFyjUfc2SZGgD7HsQDfGElp4LCh5S-pl9QDH4_8JweNihwIHDoqmVOanQqLhmJFRlHWKJjwffGmVMXo4kWvspJHU4fQ/s1600/IMG_8373.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjC_rT64DietCBkkhnO4ldXdrg0J2veSSk7SQ-BMbCMBpI-yDnFyjUfc2SZGgD7HsQDfGElp4LCh5S-pl9QDH4_8JweNihwIHDoqmVOanQqLhmJFRlHWKJjwffGmVMXo4kWvspJHU4fQ/s1600/IMG_8373.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Little Willem Timothy </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmtSuncVPuXLoVpKRcKMc5Gq_XkTRD2et0OZYWGg-wA_SfZwL6xwZIc04YSR8Bprpytg08iXYTDp9hrMXgexLmWzH2BCCuoi8ptkOvuwc7D7Hai-NJKtA7AUIpYD0AQhJa5rrD4PfXuGc/s1600/IMG_2116.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmtSuncVPuXLoVpKRcKMc5Gq_XkTRD2et0OZYWGg-wA_SfZwL6xwZIc04YSR8Bprpytg08iXYTDp9hrMXgexLmWzH2BCCuoi8ptkOvuwc7D7Hai-NJKtA7AUIpYD0AQhJa5rrD4PfXuGc/s1600/IMG_2116.JPG" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moses & Ruby future album cover </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpQq3Ogw7l4d4UKzqVNJwQzioZvlro9qfkpkzAvQhXwc0zm5ReOPkk-eODx-PGE1sb_-fjkLTtt_JuBzFNIOoheZTFlQDXG7eSiVqb6ld1_adrCapeP9yczLm0A5Dn5gn7QL2a8KFAwv8/s1600/IMG_8355.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpQq3Ogw7l4d4UKzqVNJwQzioZvlro9qfkpkzAvQhXwc0zm5ReOPkk-eODx-PGE1sb_-fjkLTtt_JuBzFNIOoheZTFlQDXG7eSiVqb6ld1_adrCapeP9yczLm0A5Dn5gn7QL2a8KFAwv8/s1600/IMG_8355.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Honey & The Virgin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-357296371090688552015-01-02T20:39:00.002-05:002015-01-02T20:39:53.529-05:00Oh, New Year With the new year came a hazy depression. Sinking and intimidating. The baby slept beside me in his cradle on New Year's Eve, while my husband tried (unsuccessfully) to get Moses to sleep. Finally, near ten or eleven, Moses climbed into bed beside me, curled up and fell to sleep--his tiny body like a pillow of heat. A bit later my husband lay down beside us and I recall the soft crackle of distant fireworks in the night.<br />
<br />
The first of the year I went running with a friend. Mid-morning, we jogged beside the lake. I looked down at the cracked pieces of ice floating along shore as we crossed a footbridge. The sky was a mix of blue and cloud, not gray. Not that sinking, dimensionless gray so common to Vermont winters. Afterwards we inspected the new paint in her bathroom and then I drove home and ate fried eggs.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The baby's perfect skin surprises me. The pink blush of his cheeks, the clear blue and white of his eyes, the downy fluff on his infant head. I like to kiss his cheeks; I like to coax his smile. His newness, an aberration against the pool of my own warn skin.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
How not to feel pain. How not to fall into melodrama. How not to become a dramatic explosion of wild pity. The heavy lidded sky of this feeling, this coarse mood, lowers itself and I feel the wave that wants to drown. But having lived this long beside such seas, I have my tricks.<br />
<br />
The thing about depression is that it moves like grief, surprising us. The thing about me is that I only get depressed in the winter and usually just as the light begins its slow return.<br />
<br />
This morning I was alone with the baby and he screamed and screamed. I could not figure out what was wrong. I wrapped him close and pressed our cheeks together. I smelled him and then set him back in his seat but he was not having it and started in again. I carried him around and around for a while. I bounced him. I tried to nurse him, to coo at him, to shush him to sleep.<br />
<br />
It is like this with depression. All the work of trying to keep it quiet exhausts me. The disease takes root in isolation--a language of isolation. People will say, it gets better, it will go away, it will be OK, or (dreadfully) they will offer advice: why don't you run, do yoga, try these vitamins, eat like this or that, drink more tea or water, don't eat this, and so on. The problem, of course, is that the depressed person feels hopelessly defeated and sees no possibility of not feeling this awful nagging angst, coated in the lingering fear of one's own end or the end of loved ones.<br />
<br />
This paper cut that won't stop aching.<br />
<br />
Though it does pass, while you are under the wave, it feels like drowning and thus in this compromised position the depressed person has a hard time believing it will. Believing in the shore, believing in some sort of salvation of the spirit.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, what is more annoying then this self pity and self squandering?<br />
<br />
Today the wind felt vicious, vindictive, as I walked with the baby.<br />
<br />
I think of a white goose. I think of a golden egg. I think of frozen water broken into small islands that crash into each other (again and again) as the wind rushes and the wave pummels shore. I think of the distance of time and the fact that my grandfather's twin sister died two days ago, the last child of his family to die. And how odd that now this entire childhood family has left the earth just as someday mine will too. Someday none of the four of us will be here and yet tonight here we are in this apartment with the cold winter slipping in, the soft song playing on the stereo, the baby's hungry cry, Moses asleep in his bed, my bare feet pressed into the wood floor beneath my desk, cold, cold, the sound of my husband's voice as he comforts the baby, the tingle in my breast as the milk comes in.<br />
<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-89596062742205747512014-12-16T13:00:00.001-05:002018-07-10T17:32:42.024-04:00Moody Christmas Blues<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
In Northern Minnesota—<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Snow falls softly on pines, collects like dust in the bows.
Home, the home of my childhood, with my two children, ignites a flood of
anxiety in me. I bark at my son, I fade into my phone, I drift at night through
the corridors of dreaming, fear disguised as violence, joy in the lives of
others. I am not sad, not depressed,
really. I am anxious. The snow falls and fills up space. The white creates a
different kind of light. When I arrived I ran through fog on a Sunday afternoon
and felt a deep sense of pleasure and relief. Now the snow will cover
everything like a suffocation of space, a sucking out of landscapes; the lines
of things will disappear. I hate the way my body feels in the cold. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, if my sister and her daughter ever arrive, I will
walk down to the sauna and light a fire. I will stoke it all afternoon and then
sit in it and sweat. I don’t want to shop for Christmas presents. I’m coming
out of my funk. In the silence of the forest the house hums. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mood ebbs and flows. Sometimes there is a violence to it.
I am not myself. I over react; I feel rage. I try to ride it out in silence,
keeping my body calm or at least away from others. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moses pours water on the floor, soup on the table (twice),
milk on the floor (twice); he will not eat. As a mother, I somehow feel it is
my fault. I did this to him. But it is just his own inherited moodiness and his
inability to regulate at the age of two and a half. He cannot stop himself from
biting a Christmas tree light. I notice that he has the cord in his mouth when
the lights blink. The tiny, narrow bulb is gone and two wires remain. Don't do that again, I say, after my mom and I call poison control, the ER, and two of my sisters. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ignore the baby. I ignore Moses. I stare out at the snow
falling. I drink cold coffee in a salmon colored cup. The cup is smooth. Life
is too long. Life is too short. No, it is timeless. I am always right here, in
this body. Everything that has happened to me has happened to this very body.
Time does not move forward anymore than seasons do. It hovers like weather on the
body, casting its mark. We only know time because the body changes. The body
weathers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Christmas tree, Oh, Christmas tree. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last week I sat with a friend in the co-op café. The window
looked out onto rows of cut pines waiting to be purchased. She was in a foul
mood. “I don’t like the smell of these dying trees,” she said. I laughed. She’s
Jewish. My family was always so proud of our tree that we cut from the forest
and dragged home. Even in our shabby apartments in West Virginia and North
Dakota our home looked beautiful for the Christmas. Now I wonder about the
dying tree thing. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The baby nurses and nurses. He is always hungry. Moses sits too close to me demanding I draw pictures that he can cut into pieces. The snow falls and I wait for my sister. </div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-72472233033894132102014-11-18T09:05:00.001-05:002014-11-18T09:05:17.184-05:00Kitties Are the Ultimate Kitsch-- Early morning wanderings <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Six in the morning is no longer early these days. I wake on the hour from around 2am until 6 to nurse the baby and then he decides it's time to rustle awake for a couple of hours so I'm up with coffee to play with him. He mostly entertains himself but right now he's grunting and I should do something. I wrap him tight in his blanket and we smile at each other for a while. </div>
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kitties are the ultimate Kitsch </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I've been reading Leslie Jamison's <i>The Empathy Exams</i> and last night I was reading her essay on sentimentality, something I've always been a little confused by. She notes that Oscar Wilde wrote that sentimentality is unearned emotion. She likens sentimentality to low cal sweeteners, in that they're sugar without the calories just like emotion without the complication. OK, so here is a passage that I find particularly illuminating from her essay entitled "In Defense of Saccharine" (the essay I've been discussing):<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sentimentality describes the moment when emotion becomes a prop to bolster the affective egos of everyone involved. "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession," Kundera observes. "The first tear says: how nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!" </span><br />
<br />
"Kitsch" refers to art that is overly sentimental or melodramatic. (The contemporary use of the word references stuff like porcelain kitty cats, paintings of the virgin, and pho-fur sofa throws). So in a way sentimentality refers to a type of emotion that is readily understood by all or to cliche emotion. Maybe it's that simple, cliche emotion = sentimentality, which is why it's so hard for me to write after having a baby because everything about love for your baby feels stickily cliche and everything has been blogged about in terms of babies and the highs and lows of parenting. The obscene humor of parenting. The rage of parenting. The extreme high of loving a child. And so on. We are experiencing a golden age of confessional writing and to be frank I am all for it. Honest, cutting, confessional writing is so very human and sometimes cathartic for both reader and writer. But I have always been afraid of sentiment and I suppose this is why I started writing in secret, cryptic poetry that could not be unlocked.<br />
<br />
The other day while having tea with friends we began discussing the growing art of oral story-telling. For example, the NPR broadcast "The Moth" features stories told on stage by individuals. In many ways this is a fast growing art form. My friend wondered if story telling was becoming an art because we no longer spent time telling each other stories. This is an interesting idea. Art becomes art when it is no long quotidian. Of course this is in no way a definition of art. If I were to define art I would say it is the expression of ideas and feelings and experiences that we can't readily express in language. I cannot explain to you how I feel about my sons in a simple sentence. I have to create art to reveal or get at the truth of the feeling. <span style="font-size: large;">I am sentimental when I say, I love these two boys more than I could have ever imagined not because it's unearned emotion (trust me I have earned this love) but because it is unearned language, it is useless language... it's too easy. </span>Still, why is story telling as an art form becoming so popular along with podcasts and talk radio? It's an interesting question and perhaps my friend is right, we live insular lives with technology as our main source of connection with each other. I barely see half my friends but I feel close with them because we email, text, Instagram, Facebook, and occasionally chat on the phone.<br />
<br />
Willem baby is asleep now and Moses is up watching "Peep." I heart Peep. The full name is something like Peep and the Big Wide World. It's slow and silly and just the right pace for a two-year-old and yeah, for the record, I'm all for kids watching TV.<br />
<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-81995621698786419792014-11-05T10:43:00.000-05:002014-11-05T11:21:20.516-05:00One Last Hurrah to a Dear Old FriendA childhood friend died of an overdose today. He struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues for many years and had just been released from an institutionalized setting. I knew him for a moment when he was not yet fully submerged in the disease of addiction and before the onset of serious mental health issues. He was bright and funny and full of life. He was a joy to be around (most of the time). But once his disease got ahold of him I did not want to see him.<br />
<br />
Over the years I gave him countless lectures, pep talks, advice--sometimes in bars but later on at restaurants or on the street or at my father's small town pharmacy. Once, we met at Riverside so I could do a reading (of my Goddess cards) for him. I had quit drinking by then and was probably urging him to do the same. He was so ernest about the whole thing, insisting that we meet at the Riv and not a my parents' house with all my other siblings around. I think we chugged coffee and he chain-smoked. I can hear his voice, "OK, Emily, OK." But he never wanted to quit drugs and alcohol. It just wasn't going to happen for him.<br />
<br />
I have been thinking of him for days now. He floats through my mind as I pour the boiling water into the french press to make coffee. The baby in one arm, Moses on the floor with a toy. I see Dave walking or hear him talking and I think, I haven't thought about him in years (he was in jail for the past two), why does this feel so bad. I think to myself, I shouldn't feel that sad, should I? But it is hard to mourn alone, miles away and not able to attend the memorial or funeral. My husband met Dave, knew who he was, but he didn't know him. My sisters quietly grieve this loss in their own ways. It is not like them (or I suppose me) to carry on publicly about loss. Then I find myself wondering, do I feel sad just because I don't want this to happen to me or to my children or my siblings or parents? Isn't that selfish? Is that what this is? Why do I feel compelled to write about him?<br />
<br />
But I know that he touched me in his way. I know that his charming, endearing self was one that I loved. I was on his team. I wanted him to succeed. And, to a certain extent, I think he was the kind of person that made everyone he knew feel special and loved. He was an open, heart-on-his-sleave kind of guy, like many alcoholics and addicts. He took it all in and then he really didn't know how to filter it or deal and so he used in order to obliterate his feelings or just numb out for a little while. This, as we know, over the long haul, doesn't work. Things just get worse, and they did for him. He ended up in trouble from drinking and driving and with some pretty serious mental health issues.<br />
<br />
<br />
Today I think of the road to his father's house and one of the last times I saw him-- years ago now since I don't live in Minnesota--he was waiting for a ride from my sister and I, standing on the edge of the dirt road in the forest. He was a bulky guy, strong and solid, not overweight, but broad and rangy like he might have been good at tossing a football or making a tackle. His head was down or perhaps his hand was over his eyes, shading them from the sunlight. He ducked into the backseat of the car and said hello. He was quiet for a time, lost in thought and staring out the window, or perhaps he began right away talking about whatever it was that he'd been thinking about as he stood there waiting, as he often did. There was this seamless movement in him from thought to speech. Or perhaps he began pouring his heart out about something that deeply concerned him. He could become fixated.<br />
<br />
<br />
I remember how he talked about politics (conspiracy theories when he wasn't on his medication). He always wanted to return to school to study political science. He was bright and yet vulnerable in a crushing way. I suppose it was hard to see a big, overgrown boy fall so hard. My sisters and I always had a soft spot for him--one of them dated him for a while. He had a good heart and true spirit. There was something about him that seemed almost possible, if only he could get it together. I wonder how many people wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him to get it together, but only because they could see so much in him that was blocked by his use of drugs and alcohol, the disease of addiction that is only kept at bay through abstinence. But he could never stay clean for long (I don't really think he ever tried) and then he'd end up in the hospital or jail for violating probation. He'd stop taking his medication and we wouldn't see him for a while.<br />
<br />
<br />
I remember him in Minneapolis, young and hopeful. I see him walking with his head a little down, dipping into his broad shoulders, covered most likely in a slightly warn jacket, his pants a little unkempt and out of style in that heart-breaking way that made you love him more. I want to see him walking away into some other possibility, happily living a boring daily life with a job and kids and a dog. Or perhaps it wasn't boring, it was wild and exciting, but sober. I don't know.<br />
<br />
<br />
I wish him all the love and peace in the world.<br />
<br />
Safe travels my friend and may the light be with you always.<br />
<br />
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<br />Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4303003074741717795.post-48882048144814397082014-05-29T11:18:00.002-04:002014-05-29T11:18:49.176-04:00The Dream <div class="MsoNormal">
We abandoned our part-time jobs as baristas, bar maids,
hostesses, vegetable farmers, fry cooks, landscapers, nannies, lifeguards, and retail
specialists. We left behind our full-time jobs as painters and sculptors, poets
and essayists, puppeteers and circus performers. We left town for a country of
prairie grass and junipers, of oceans lapping deserts, of great islands of sand
and sunset. We took our children, wrapped to our backs, cuddled in wagons and
wheelbarrows, walking at our sides. We left our cars in the streets with the
windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition. We left our credit cards and
tip money, our rolls of cash and bank accounts; we left our designer jeans, red
lipsticks, and shaving creams that smelled of cinnamon and shoe leather and
lavender; we left our student loans and master’s degrees. We carried dried
beans, loaves of bread, books as old as grandmothers. We packed knives and
wooden bowls, blocks of butter and bottles of virgin olive oil. We carried
hatchets and spades wrapped in burlap.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our hair grew long and our children dirty as we walked. Our
hands grew strong and our fingernails hardened. We found forests of fir with
moss floors where we lay our heads and our babes to sleep. We listened to the
owls cry in the night and held each other in a different way, from a different
fear—a fear that felt necessary and fleeting. Our children curled into us and
sighed in their sleep and we dreamed of great mountains with rushing streams
filled with fish. We dreamed of the untethered ocean, strong like a god. We
dreamed of a home somewhere deep in the earth, thick with mud and grass, with
vegetation, where we lived women and men in collusion, green as earth. Round
and happy with need. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We had read Thoreau and the Nearing’s; we had read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Sand County Almanac</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silent Spring</i> along with “Howl” and
Wendell Berry. We believed in homesteading and self-sufficiency and wood cabins
with saunas beside the pond or the stream or the lake. We longed for gardens
and chickens and farms with apple orchards. We wanted our children to live
freely of the land and we knew it would be hard, but we believed in a better
life, as though we might be separate from the rest of the world, free from the need
to belong. We believed we could change from the body out, and that sweat and
muscle would bloom and bear the fruit of our labor. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">www.thevermontmovie.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We stood in clearings and watched deer; we cried out at the
sight of geese flocking home overhead; we lay at night under the blistering
stars of a deeper sky and listened to the wolves howl. We learned the names of
trees and flowers and birds and mushrooms. We pointed out the constellations we
had never been able to see before and taught our children the old myths because
history felt necessary, story vital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
We built cabins in the sides of mountains, barns in the
valleys, and stood in the bluffs beside the sea, filled with the sound of the
waves as they crashed and shoaled, filled with the distance of the horizon, the
sky lipping there. Swallows built their nests in our barns and we welcomed
them. Our children grew strong and wild romping through the fir forests, the
birch groves and rivers that coiled through the land as they made their way to
the sea. Fear left us as we stood in pastures beside sheep, on the tips of
mountains looking out letting the world beyond us come in, move through us,
form us as it saw fit. We let the weather dictate our lives, the sun our
sleeping habits and when we returned to making art, writing stories,
puppeteering and drama, we felt content with mediocrity, we were lazy with our
craft, our sentences floundered and burst, letters fled the page, women stood
on stage and forgot their lines and no one cared. Paintings looked like
replicas of the depicted and sculptures stood lifeless in the fields. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maurice De Vlaminck</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Soon our children grew up and left us for the cities, the
wars, the marketplace. We grew old alone, together. We walked to the sea and
listened to her song when our eyes no longer worked. We lay down on the moss of
the fir forest and waited for the owls to cry out, for the sound of the wolves
howling, full with longing. We climbed the mountainside and sat among the wild
sheep; they nuzzled our furry chins and dry lips and curled up at our sides. We
held them. We felt the night drop like a shadow and when we slept we dreamed of
our children, full and round like the moon, sleeping in tiny rooms in the city,
driving cars and riding subways, sitting in cubicles dressed up in neck ties
and heels, sipping cocktails with cherries and lime wedges after eight-hour
days, kissing and making babies and filling their bank accounts with numbers
under a smoggy sky, filled with angst and love and hope and dreams of their
own. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Emily Arnason Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06726203590843425594noreply@blogger.com5