A long time ago T. S. Eliot wrote in one of his poems that “April is the cruelest month.” With the war in Iraq going so badly and so many other conflicts bursting out all over the globe these past thirty days of April, we can only answer Eliot with a sad, sad “Yes.” The lives of hundreds of thousands of families and friends of people wounded and killed from and in many countries in the world will never be the same.

So often it is poetry that can resonate the words we cannot quite bring forth personally when we are hurting and sad. In the week after 9/11, the New Yorker published a poem by a Polish poet Adam Zagajewski entitled “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.” (I am indebted to Esther De Wahl’s lovely little book Lost in Wonder for knowledge of the poem.)

In this poem Adam asks us to find some way to praise the same world that is mutilated; praise it for its moments of beauty, loveliness, quietness that are so often a fleeting gift. Part of the poem goes likes this:

Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew…
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns….
Praise the mutilated world.

I remembered this poem in the past days and tried to honor the moments of beauty and loveliness even while I honored my sadness. Yes, there was the roll call with photographs of women and men killed in Iraq concluding The News Hour on PBS; and I read the women and men’s names out, their age and cities as my husband and I sat in the stillness of grief. And there was also the surprise of the iris blooms—huge bright purple—on the plants my husband brought from the yard of his great-grandmother when she died. We had been waiting for almost ten years for those irises to bloom, and they bloomed this month, this spring. Try to praise the mutilated world… There is the desecration of our air and our water in the U. S., terrible fouling that is increasing and multiplying danger. I sign petitions and write letters and checks. And there was my discovery for the first time behind the gym where I go to work out of the clearest, little stream that rushes over rock ledges and makes the most peaceful sounds in a couple of small waterfalls. Try to praise the mutilated world.

The gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns

So I will do my best to hold the tension: the horrific things being done in our world and the pain and loss of all that…and those precious moments of grace and gift when I do see a red bird in the cedar tree by the edge of the garage, when I hear the soft rain falling in the valley behind our house. May each of us find someway, while acknowledging the truth of what is happening here at home and far away, to notice strawberries, dew, a gray feather, and gentle light. Praise the mutilated world.

At the beginning of each new year, I choose two or three new things to turn my attention to for that year. Those words sound so ordinary for what really happens in this process. The year I chose wildflowers as something to turn my attention to for that year, not only did I find books on wildflowers in Texas–and Ireland, the country of my great-grandparents!–but I also found myself hiking in the desert mountains around Tucson after I had bought a little magnifying eye in a tiny leather pouch which hung on a string around my neck. What was I doing there? Looking at wildflowers, both with my eyes and with the little magnifier. Not by plan or design…but as a natural evolution of something as simple as saying I will pay attention to wildflowers this year. Another year one of my areas of focus was technology…and I found myself–again not by conscious planning–buying my first hand-held pda and transferring my calendar and address data base… something I had resistance to for years previously.

This last year one of the areas I chose was color. It is amazing what all I began to see in the world because I had decided to pay attention to color. I read the most marvelous book about the invention of the color mauve and how that invention affected x-rays, photography, fashion, and a host of other things. (In fact, the subtitle of the book contained the words: “The Color that Changed the World.” I also read a history of the color pallet which had wonderful lines like this in it:

The best way I’ve found of understanding this is to think not so much of something “being” a color but of it “doing” a color. The atoms in a ripe tomato are busy shivering–or dancing or singing; the metaphors can be as joyful as the colors they describe–in such a way that when white light falls on them absorb most of the blue and yellow light and they reject the red–meaning paradoxically that the “red” tomato is actually one that contains every wavelength except red.”
–Victoria Finlay writing in Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Hand carved color pencils from the Jewish Museum in Berlin

It would not be an over-statement for me to say that the idea of an object “doing” a color instead of “being” a color altered how I looked at the world permanently. And I thought I had chosen “color” because of the beauty!

I found myself buying a calendar called Colours at a design museum in London. When Jerele and I toured the Jewish Museum in Berlin, I could not pass up some wonderful thick, hand-carved color pencils which I keep in a cup on my bookshelf and look at every day while I’m working. An art book I saw mentioned in O Magazine called Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels jumped right out to me because of the beautiful colors, and I ordered the book immediately and often look at it during my quiet time in the mornings, being inspired by the serenity and peace of the beautiful paintings. I found that I was paying more attention to color when I planned a meal for friends: how about roasted cherry tomatoes along side the broccoli, and maybe some yellow lemon peel in the rice? It was if “color” were a way I was actually looking out at life…not just a “subject” I might be paying attention to.

	Colours, a calendar from a London design museum

Some of the most fun about all this is deciding what to choose. I’m never in a rush… I start thinking about what focus areas I’ll have for the new year usually in mid-December; and by the last week of the year I’m thinking about the possibilities a lot with so much joy. I have decided on two areas so far for 2004: photography and hospitality. In photography I’m going to pay attention to things like how to make photo albums using I-Photo on my Mac and also I’m going to pay attention to getting a few of my photos ready for a small exhibit by the end of the year. For hospitality, I don’t have a clue what is going to show up…the idea just keeps sticking up front in my mind, so I’m going to choose that area and see what happens. I’ll let you know next December! I will probably chose one more focus area for 2004 but I don’t know what that will be yet.

Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels

It’s so easy for me to get a rut, thinking about the same things, looking at the world in the same ways. I don’t want to do that. I want to stay awake, interested, learning, enjoying…and with so much variety, beauty, knowledge, pleasure in the world around us, how can anyone be bored?

By having three new focuses for 2004, I know I will be different next December 31. I’ll have had experiences, thoughts, dreams, adventures, conversations, ideas, and pleasures that I would not have had, had I not chosen to pay attention. I’m so excited!

And I wish the same for you. If you do something similar or decide to begin choosing an area or two for new focus in 2004, send me an email and let me know what you’ve chosen. And let me know from time to time during the year what you are experiencing!

Jerele and I live on a high hill, and I often take our dog Dusty to walk up the hill to the top where we can turn left or right and walk on the spine of the mountain in a straight line for several miles. But going up the hill is what is tough! One day recently, I was so tired by the time we reached the crest of the hill that I had to stop and rest. And fortunate for me. Because I rested right by a big cactus plant. I’m guessing the pads of this cactus plant were perhaps six inches across at least, seven, and 4 or 5 inches high. And there were several of them.

But what really struck me—in fact, startled me so much that I had to go closer—was that the cactus pads were solid purple. Now, I’m accustomed to seeing a cactus plant that is green. In fact, I’m expecting to see a cactus plant that is green. But there was not a spot of green anywhere on this cactus plant. It was purple. Really purple, not purple-tinged, not purple spotted, not green with a purple flower. The cactus was purple. I found this so beautiful that I wanted to turn around right then and go back home to get my camera! Until I remembered I’d have to walk up the hill again, so I decided I’d settle for just remembering this surprising plant.

I thought about this cactus that surprised me so much again last weekend when I walked into an art gallery in Santa Fe to see the paintings of a dear friend, Joan Bohls, whose work was part of a show having its opening that evening. There on the wall was a picture Joan had painted of a cactus. Her cactus even outdid my cactus! Red, green, yellow, pink—and even a little purple. A joyful painting. A painting that really makes the viewer look at the cactus and see it in a new way.

	Painting by Joan Bohls

Many, many years ago, I spent a few days in the Mojave Desert in an Outward Bound course. (If you’ve read my book Seven Choices: Finding Daylight after Loss Shatters Your World, you’ll remember my talking about this escapade in the “Integration” chapter.) When I was thinking about the cactus I saw on the hill above my house and about Joan’s cactus on canvas, I remembered that Outward Bound Course.

One afternoon each of us in the Outward Bound course was dropped off somewhere in the desert to survive alone. After I had spread out my plastic, set up my supplies, checked to be sure I had my food, there wasn’t anything else to do. No one to talk to. Nowhere to go. No assignment except just to be there. I remember that after a while, I started walking right around my campsite, being careful not to venture too far. (After all, this was where the Outward Bound folks knew where to look for me!)

As I walked, there was nothing to look at but the desert. Dirt, stones, rocks, desert plants, Joshua trees, and cactus. At first everything looked beige and dusty brown. But the slower I walked and the closer I looked, the more color I saw. I remember seeing a lot of purple. But I also remember seeing other colors, too. Pale yellow, ochre red, chocolate brown, gray, and green. In a rush, I had seen what I expected to see—beige and brown. When, really, what was present was a beautiful variety of colors. My eyes adapted because I was really looking.