Books and Songs

I fully realize that I am posting this story about the beginning of our Park City trip after I have already talked about our last day there, much like I will be posting Weston's birth story after his death story. It's an interesting parallel with the chaos of my life and heart right now. The only concept of time that I have right now is "Before Weston" and "After Weston." Anyway...

I read Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire in high school and have been fascinated by the desert ever since. Abbey was an environmentalist, conservationist, and desert lover. In the book, he lived and worked alone in Arches National Park and wrote beautifully of his experiences there. The landscape of southern Utah is harsh, desolate, remote, and otherworldly. It is also stunningly beautiful (to me, anyway). The desert forces people to confront the limits of their physical bodies. For me, the harsh environment of the desert also forces a baring of my mind and soul. Just as there is literally no vegetation to hide behind in the desert, there is no hiding from my feelings when I am there.

Before I go any further, let me make something clear. You might be thinking, "Wow, she lives in PHOENIX. If the desert forces her to confront her inner self, she must be SO in touch with her feelings ALL THE TIME." The truth is, we live in central Phoenix, where some very good urban planners/contractors/I don't know who planted a lot of trees back in the 1960s and 70s. We have grass at our house. There is not a cactus in sight in our whole neighborhood (except for one house). Actually, my neighborhood reminds me of the neighborhood in Texas where I grew up. So, I am not forced to confront my feelings on a daily basis. And, before I dig this hole any deeper, Texas friends, or all my friends with grass and trees, please know that I am not saying that you don't confront your feelings either.

So, back to our sojourn through southern Utah. We planned to stay overnight at Bryce Canyon National Park. I ended up driving the last several hours through the northernmost parts of Arizona and southern Utah. Shannon sat in the back seat to entertain Caroline, so I was alone in the front seat. This also meant that I was in control of the music.

Remember, I am way into natural birth. I had a "childbirth" playlist on my iPod for Caroline's birth, and I made another one in my early days of pregnancy with Weston. I filled the playlist with mellow, meaningful music that would help me relax, forget the pain of contractions, and be emotionally present for the birth. While playing the music that I had hoped to play while welcoming my son into the world in October is horribly tragic, I somehow decided the childbirth playlist would be a good thing to listen to while driving through the otherworldliness of southern Utah that forces me to confront my thoughts and emotions.

In addition to the desert (and Junior Mints, and a lot of other things), I have been obsessed with Sarah McLachlan for years. This is old news to some of you (if anyone is still actually reading). Much of her music is mellow, and all of it is emotionally intense, so a lot of it ended up on my childbirth playlist. But it's funny how an album that you know by heart can suddenly take on an entire new meaning. This is what happened to me with one of Sarah's older albums, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.

There are so many emotions I will have to work through to come to terms with Weston's death. At this point, if I am still and quiet, these emotions threaten to overwhelm me and just make me want to completely retreat from reality...perhaps into desert solitaire, a la Edward Abbey, or "Elsewhere" (see below).

Like poetry (Sarah McLachlan's lyrics ARE poetry), song lyrics can mean different things to different people. In addition to the songs below, the more well-known Sarah McLachlan songs "Angel" and "I Will Remember You" resonate with me as well. According to some, the song "Angel" is about heroin. Just in case you are wondering, I am not thinking about heroin when I think about that song.

So, as I was driving through the deserts of southern Utah (and Abbey the purist would not approve of the driving part), here are just some of the Sarah McLachlan lyrics that took on new meaning to me:

Losing a baby:

Under a blackened sky
Far beyond the glaring streetlights
Sleeping on empty dreams
The vultures lie in wait
...
When all we wanted was the dream
To have and to hold that precious little thing
Like every generation yields
The new born hope unjaded by their years
Pressed up against the glass
I found myself wanting sympathy
But to be consumed again
Oh I know would be the death of me
And there is a love that's inherently given
A kind of blindness offered to appease
And in that light of forbidden joy
Oh I know I won't receive it

-Wait

Wanting escape:

I love the time and in between
The calm inside me
In the space where I can breathe
I believe there is a
Distance I have wandered
To touch upon the years of
Reaching out and reaching in
Holding out holding in
I believe
This is heaven to no one else but me
And I'll defend it as long as I can be
Left here to linger in silence
If I choose to
Would you try to understand
-Elsewhere

And, finally, the most hopeful:

All the fear has left me now
I'm not frightened anymore.
It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh.
It's my mouth that pushes out this breath
And if I shed a tear I won't cage it.
I won't fear love
And if I feel a rage I won't deny it.
I won't fear love.
-Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

When we got to Bryce Canyon that evening, we saw a rainbow again, like we had on the night Weston died. God gave me peace through most unconventional media that day.

P.S. I cut and pasted some lyrics from another website, and somehow an Obama ad ended up here. You'll see it below if you scroll down far enough. PLEASE BELIEVE ME when I tell you I am not trying to be political here! Although I am not keeping up with the presidential campaign too much these days, I don't really like any politicians right now anyway.

 

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