Sometimes it’s good to keep things simple. To refrain from overanalyzing, sorting though, figuring out, staying in the gray between extremes or opposites.
Hot/Cold.
Good/Bad.
In/Out.
Soft/Hard.
Open/Closed.
Love/ ?
[What’s the opposite of love? Perhaps I’ve just stumbled on a topic for another day.]
Anyway, in everyday life, there is likely to be no absolute in these terms, and most of our time is spent in the middle. From childhood on, we work with kids, teenagers, and adults to understand and live in the complexity of life. To avoid polarities. No situation or person is all good or all bad. No one is all right or all wrong. There is a multicultural, deconstructionist framework to be applied to every person, every situation, every emotion and every thought. And once we can understand this complexity, we can figure out what to do in a given situation, and this is the path to healthy choices. This is the sign of advanced, mature functioning.
There are times, however, when I prefer a Sesame Street kind of simplicity. The show has become a present-day global, multimedia, educational force, but previously, before the plasticene era (which I love the sound of, but don’t really know what this term means, so forgive me for using it without knowing what I’m conveying), it focused on the simplest learning tasks for toddlers and preschoolers, teaching them fundamental building blocks that would later serve as the basis from which kids would have to form complex and mixed thinking.
Sesame Street used to teach word opposites, just like my list. And as I got older, way older, I learned that they also did these in Spanish. They’d use a sing-song melody, words flashing in large white font, set against a primary color square, divided into four rectangles. First in English, then in Spanish. The voices would repeat, the white words would shimmer and shake when they were called out.
For some reason, Abrido/Cerrado has stayed with me all these years. I’m pretty sure it means open/closed, but even if it doesn’t translate exactly, that’s what’s in my memory. I’ve used it more times than I should probably admit, with friends, colleagues, even students or people at work. It’s a quick and useful metaphor to cue people to stay emotionally open, when the urge is to close. People seem to recognize intuitively that they have such an opening/closing process, even if they’ve never thought of it in that way before. We’re a lot like poppies, which open and close daily, turning to the sun and then closing down for the night to protect our precious pollen. Nyctinasty, it’s called, this process of closing at the onset of darkness.
The other day, I was driving home, reciting “abrido/cerrado” like a mantra, over and over. I was anticipating some bad news, and could feel the darkness of my worry. “Can I stay open for 30 minutes?” I asked myself. “I don’t know,” my overly emotional self replied. “Let’s see.”
I used every bit of Sesame Street coaching to keep me in check. I did OK, staying open and receiving the news, and moving quickly to an analysis of the complex ways in which it was neither all good nor all bad, the strengths and possibilities inherent as well as the meaning for possible losses. By the end, I had sorted it out, felt a variety of emotions, and concluded that indeed the situation was not that great, but was certainly livable, and the essentials of life in my known universe would go on.
Sometimes life shows up like the twinkling magic of Hogwarts’ dining hall, and sometimes like the darkness of the Forever Forest, instead. I stayed open in the face of darkness, then rallied my higher level forces to figure out what to do with the shadows and gloom. This might be how we’re all supposed to do it, to stay open enough to create light and goodness in the face of what seems initially like a Dark Lord’s wrath.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
A Bit of a Slump
I was in a bit of a slump the other day, piggybacking on other people’s slumps the way a summer cold passes through a household, and you end up sniffling and chilled after watching everyone else go through it yet somehow telling yourself you’ll be spared. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really, as the slump was so palpable around me, but there’s nothing like a good education, lifelong dedication to personal growth, and years of experience in the helping professions to cultivate little moments of personal surprise.
So I was surprised and in a slump. Hmmm. Best way out? A good book or an episode of Glee. I know I’m late to Glee, even later to Netflix, but so be it. Just the fact that the entire first season is on my “instant queue” is enough to lift my spirits. The idea that there are enough people in the world who would make a musical TV show popular is reassurance enough, as I rarely meet others who will watch Grease, Momma Mia, West Side Story and all the rest as many times as I can, not feeling the least bit foolish crooning every word to every part, swaggering the male vocals, swooning the female ballads, shouting out the choral parts, with surety and sensual sass about love and lust and love lost and love found and love transcending. Of course, I can’t really watch Glee unless I’m alone – the content is too mature for kids, I don’t care how catchy the tunes are, and I need to be completely alone so I can turn the music up, way up, and shake my stuff with the dance scenes. I’m sure it’s quite a sight. I love to hate the despicable characters, ache with the as-yet (and I’m only on episode 6, so no one tell me how it turns out) unrequited love between the OCD guidance counselor and the married head of Glee Club. But more than anything I can convey in print, I loved watching the football team dance in formation to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. I watched that scene twice. I’m sure I'll watch it again.
Since the house was peopled with others-in-a-slump, my instant-fix was unavailable. On to number two – a good book by an author who can provide a little pick-me-up. I’m 15 years late to Marian Keyes, as her first novel was published in 1995. (So my lateness to Glee is actually less late than . . .). I picked up her latest novel and listened to it, enjoying the lilt of the Irish, the delight of unexpected Irish profanity, and the satisfaction of the story line. Then I went on to listen to her first collection of first-person journalism essays, and found myself laughing and nodding my head in agreement as she described the surprise of her life becoming a writer. I see from reviews that her writing falls into the category of Chick Lit, but that seems a bit condescending. Jane Austen wrote about the same things, but we call her oeuvre “romantic fiction” and we look back on her writing now as historical or period pieces. Perhaps, then, Chick Lit is our period’s romantic fiction, and will one day be elevated to regular literature - we just need another hundred years or so to pass.
I decided to read her first book, since I’d started with her last. Where did this author begin? What were the ideas and who were the people in her mind as she made the transition from accounts clerk to writer? Was she as strong a writer out of the gate, or has she matured over time? And, less loftier, did the book come on CD so I could listen to it at the gym?
The book came the other day, so it was a fresh start with it. I took my slumpy self off and got on the eliptical and listened to what turns out to be a story of a woman whose husband leaves her the day their baby is born. It’s set as a comedy, and perhaps it will become one, but the first 40 minutes (duration of my cardio workout) left me a bit saddened. I don’t yet like these characters very much, but I imagine I will, as I like the author so darned much. Just like reading People magazine and finding out what’s wrong with, well, the People, then feeling better about ourselves, I did feel a tiny bit better.
Until I got to a small passage, nearly at the 40-minute mark, about the way people create a narrative of how life doles out bad things, that ultimately did the trick:
So I was surprised and in a slump. Hmmm. Best way out? A good book or an episode of Glee. I know I’m late to Glee, even later to Netflix, but so be it. Just the fact that the entire first season is on my “instant queue” is enough to lift my spirits. The idea that there are enough people in the world who would make a musical TV show popular is reassurance enough, as I rarely meet others who will watch Grease, Momma Mia, West Side Story and all the rest as many times as I can, not feeling the least bit foolish crooning every word to every part, swaggering the male vocals, swooning the female ballads, shouting out the choral parts, with surety and sensual sass about love and lust and love lost and love found and love transcending. Of course, I can’t really watch Glee unless I’m alone – the content is too mature for kids, I don’t care how catchy the tunes are, and I need to be completely alone so I can turn the music up, way up, and shake my stuff with the dance scenes. I’m sure it’s quite a sight. I love to hate the despicable characters, ache with the as-yet (and I’m only on episode 6, so no one tell me how it turns out) unrequited love between the OCD guidance counselor and the married head of Glee Club. But more than anything I can convey in print, I loved watching the football team dance in formation to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. I watched that scene twice. I’m sure I'll watch it again.
Since the house was peopled with others-in-a-slump, my instant-fix was unavailable. On to number two – a good book by an author who can provide a little pick-me-up. I’m 15 years late to Marian Keyes, as her first novel was published in 1995. (So my lateness to Glee is actually less late than . . .). I picked up her latest novel and listened to it, enjoying the lilt of the Irish, the delight of unexpected Irish profanity, and the satisfaction of the story line. Then I went on to listen to her first collection of first-person journalism essays, and found myself laughing and nodding my head in agreement as she described the surprise of her life becoming a writer. I see from reviews that her writing falls into the category of Chick Lit, but that seems a bit condescending. Jane Austen wrote about the same things, but we call her oeuvre “romantic fiction” and we look back on her writing now as historical or period pieces. Perhaps, then, Chick Lit is our period’s romantic fiction, and will one day be elevated to regular literature - we just need another hundred years or so to pass.
I decided to read her first book, since I’d started with her last. Where did this author begin? What were the ideas and who were the people in her mind as she made the transition from accounts clerk to writer? Was she as strong a writer out of the gate, or has she matured over time? And, less loftier, did the book come on CD so I could listen to it at the gym?
The book came the other day, so it was a fresh start with it. I took my slumpy self off and got on the eliptical and listened to what turns out to be a story of a woman whose husband leaves her the day their baby is born. It’s set as a comedy, and perhaps it will become one, but the first 40 minutes (duration of my cardio workout) left me a bit saddened. I don’t yet like these characters very much, but I imagine I will, as I like the author so darned much. Just like reading People magazine and finding out what’s wrong with, well, the People, then feeling better about ourselves, I did feel a tiny bit better.
Until I got to a small passage, nearly at the 40-minute mark, about the way people create a narrative of how life doles out bad things, that ultimately did the trick:
Nothing in my mostly great life is as bad as this. I don’t have even a single disaster, let alone multiples, on my plate. De-slumped, I took my post-work-out victorious self home, and then spent a day in the sun with my clan. By the end of the day, there was overall less slump-age, and the trajectory is good for this bug getting out of our household and moving on to the next, just like our summer cold did last month.Up to now I suppose that I'd thought that life doled out the unpleasant things to me in evenly spaced bite-size pieces. That it never gave me more than I could cope with at one time.
When I used to hear about people who had serial disasters, like having a car accident, losing a job and catching their boyfriend in bed with their sister all in one week, I used to kind of think it was their fault. Well, not exactly their fault. But I thought that if people behaved like victims they would become victims, if people expected the worst to happen then it invariably did.
I could see now how wrong I was. Sometimes people don't volunteer to be victims and they become victims anyway. It's not their fault. It certainly wasn't my fault that my husband thought that he'd fallen in love with someone else. I didn't expect it to happen and I certainly didn't want it to happen. But it had happened.
I knew then that life was no respecter of circumstance. The force that flings disasters at us doesn't say "Well, I won't give her that lump in her breast for another year. Best to let her recover from the death of her mother first." It just goes right on ahead and does whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it.Now I realized that no one is immune from the serial disaster syndrome.
-Marian Keyes, Watermelon (1995)
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Summer Rain
I woke up early this morning, and heard the sheets of rain as they were coming down, the loud, individual drips from the drain pipes, and from the window in my office, I now hear the water pooling, gurgling almost, in a part of our lawn which has insufficient drainage, and the additional drip of water into the eddies and puddles on our patio, because it has, I guess, insufficient drainage.
I grew up with Midwestern summer rain – thunder storms and lightening and the way the air got warmer and wetter and thicker as rain approached. Rain that might not break the heat. Rain that, in combination with humid air above lakes and rivers, fomented into the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. If I’d bothered to take Zoology 101 in college, I’d have learned the reason: A warm, moderately humid climate and fertile soil are favorable for insect population growth. I’d have also learned that some mosquito species fly into the wind, others against the wind, so no matter how much wind we’d have, it would help these little critters, dispersing them to even more favorable breeding grounds. What the Professor and the textbook wouldn’t have explained, however, is how it was that the entire mosquito population in the Midwest seemed intent on one destination: my body.
Apparently, some people are more sensitive to the chemicals the mosquitoes leave behind – some people barely feel the itch. I, as will come as no surprise, am on the sensitive side of things – emotional and physical and, apparently, metabolic. So when I get bit, I itch. A lot.
This was the era of calamine lotion, which, given as much time as I spent sporting a body suit of pink blotches, would have been a better era if the lotion had worked. This was the era of sleep-away camps and cans of Off. I sprayed myself until I had fumes rising off my clothes and hair, but still, put me in an area with other humans and mosquitoes, and the outcome is reliable – I’m gonna get bit. A lot.
When I was in my 20’s, and headed off to my first and only Club Med experience, I’d pre-dosed myself for two weeks with Vitamin B tablets, as I’d heard that if I ingested enough of this vitamin, my blood would change, making me no longer the human equivalent of a mosquito meth lab. I took a lot of vitamin B. I got bit less than my travel companion. But I got bit.
Over the years, my plight has been shared, and the war against mosquitoes has become more effective. Citronella candles – where were you when my folks wanted to eat on the patio in summer? DEET, oh DEET, why did you stay away so long?
Last summer, on a weekend trip to a National Park, I found the perfect combination for me: I pre-treated my clothes with stuff that was supposed to get in the fibers and repel insects. I combined every possible high-level topical repellant and slathered myself multiple times a day. I sprayed additional stuff over my (pre-treated) clothes. I wore multiple layers. I sprayed the tent, inside and out. Sprayed the sleeping bags. I stunk, my clothes stunk, my skin had a yellow-green sheen, and my Off™ Clip-On battery-operated fan made a low, consistent noise everywhere I went, sending toxic fumes circulating around me. At night, I hung the Off fan inside the tent. My trip is underscored by the white noise of the continuous murmur of the fan.
Other people who visit National Parks are apparently there to celebrate Nature. They might wear a layer or two, or even put on a “natural” repellant. To them, I was the eco-anti-Christ. It’s possible that there will be mutant forms of fauna and flora that will one day be traced back to the introduction of my chemical warfare last July. But, by the end of our trip, I noticed that the most virulent of the eye-ball starers sidled up to me at the campfire, surreptitiously standing in my circulating stream, stealing my protection like it was the neighbor’s wi-fi.
I grew up with Midwestern summer rain – thunder storms and lightening and the way the air got warmer and wetter and thicker as rain approached. Rain that might not break the heat. Rain that, in combination with humid air above lakes and rivers, fomented into the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. If I’d bothered to take Zoology 101 in college, I’d have learned the reason: A warm, moderately humid climate and fertile soil are favorable for insect population growth. I’d have also learned that some mosquito species fly into the wind, others against the wind, so no matter how much wind we’d have, it would help these little critters, dispersing them to even more favorable breeding grounds. What the Professor and the textbook wouldn’t have explained, however, is how it was that the entire mosquito population in the Midwest seemed intent on one destination: my body.
Apparently, some people are more sensitive to the chemicals the mosquitoes leave behind – some people barely feel the itch. I, as will come as no surprise, am on the sensitive side of things – emotional and physical and, apparently, metabolic. So when I get bit, I itch. A lot.
This was the era of calamine lotion, which, given as much time as I spent sporting a body suit of pink blotches, would have been a better era if the lotion had worked. This was the era of sleep-away camps and cans of Off. I sprayed myself until I had fumes rising off my clothes and hair, but still, put me in an area with other humans and mosquitoes, and the outcome is reliable – I’m gonna get bit. A lot.
When I was in my 20’s, and headed off to my first and only Club Med experience, I’d pre-dosed myself for two weeks with Vitamin B tablets, as I’d heard that if I ingested enough of this vitamin, my blood would change, making me no longer the human equivalent of a mosquito meth lab. I took a lot of vitamin B. I got bit less than my travel companion. But I got bit.
Over the years, my plight has been shared, and the war against mosquitoes has become more effective. Citronella candles – where were you when my folks wanted to eat on the patio in summer? DEET, oh DEET, why did you stay away so long?
Last summer, on a weekend trip to a National Park, I found the perfect combination for me: I pre-treated my clothes with stuff that was supposed to get in the fibers and repel insects. I combined every possible high-level topical repellant and slathered myself multiple times a day. I sprayed additional stuff over my (pre-treated) clothes. I wore multiple layers. I sprayed the tent, inside and out. Sprayed the sleeping bags. I stunk, my clothes stunk, my skin had a yellow-green sheen, and my Off™ Clip-On battery-operated fan made a low, consistent noise everywhere I went, sending toxic fumes circulating around me. At night, I hung the Off fan inside the tent. My trip is underscored by the white noise of the continuous murmur of the fan.
Other people who visit National Parks are apparently there to celebrate Nature. They might wear a layer or two, or even put on a “natural” repellant. To them, I was the eco-anti-Christ. It’s possible that there will be mutant forms of fauna and flora that will one day be traced back to the introduction of my chemical warfare last July. But, by the end of our trip, I noticed that the most virulent of the eye-ball starers sidled up to me at the campfire, surreptitiously standing in my circulating stream, stealing my protection like it was the neighbor’s wi-fi.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Marriage Poems
A backwater town (if only there was water) nestled in base of a mountain valley, in a county called Mineral County, with a 2010 census of 410 people (up from 2000, when the town had a mere 374 people living in 152 households) is host to a bookstore proclaiming “100,000 Used Books.”
So off the interstate we turn, neither one of us able to resist a used bookstore. Having spent some long afternoons at Powell’s as well as stopping in used bookstores in just about every town we ever visit, we have proof on our bookshelves of the wisdom of stopping. Treasures – old tomes, newer children’s books, collections of poetry, art coffee table books, classic fiction, books that will end up as next season’s Christmas gifts, psychology and philosophy and history and comparative religion and books about food and wine and cooking ...
My husband, who is taller and can actually examine items on the top shelves - and can hold more books in his arms - always comes away with more selections than me – the lower-shelf browser with girl-sized arms. We stay as long as we can before the inevitable cat hair and dust overwhelm my system, and I reluctantly must head to the counter to make my purchases. I could stay longer, I imagine, if I brought my own oxygen tank.
But back to the backwater. We pull up in this very small town, only to realize we’d made the same decision four years ago, the adventuresome spirit of just popping off the highway to explore something cool and new slightly deflating. But we’re here, so we do what all married couples do – repeat the past. As soon as we’re in the door, we’ve confirmed, that yes, this is the same place. It may have 100,000 books, but that includes the ones piled all the way to the ceiling. And since it gets its inventory from the surrounding area, it has slightly less breadth and depth than if it were closer to anything mildly urban. So the odds of finding a treasure today are slim.
Off I head to Literature and Poetry; my husband heads to Psychology. My eye wanders over some compilations, some poets I’ve (of course) never heard of, and rests on a little white tome, just 6½ inches high, called, Marriage Poems. The cover promises a “sparkling collection of poems about virtually every aspect of matrimony” with contributions from Shakespeare, Omar Khayyám, D.H. Lawrence, Ovid and even the Song of Songs from the Old Testament.
We’d been feeling very couple-y on our road trip, as we had the luxury to spend hours discussing our relationship and our parenting, concluding that we’re just delighted with ourselves. We might have edited out some things, and put a positive spin on some of our less great bits, but it’s nice to spend time glorifying one another rather than a tempting, yet toxic, tug to find fault. Plus, we’re coming up to our anniversary. I figured I’d get the book, and we’d read love poems to each other that night. Not that we have a big history with doing this, but there have been the few times.
As we got back in to the car, with this as our sole purchase, and drove off, I started going through the pages. “Read me one,” my husband requested. I’d just finished the first one, and it was sing-songy and evoked an image of busty young maidens dancing around the May pole. I read it anyway. He was under-impressed. The second reading produced a vague sexual reference I’d missed the first time, but still nothing great. Just because I can’t resist, here’s the last stanza:
Later that night, I kept pouring through the book, expectantly waiting for the ones we could read to each other to highlight our road-trip romance.
Except that I couldn’t find a single poem I liked. Even the segment from Song of Songs wasn’t as pleasing as the part that was in our marriage ceremony: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” I suppose mine wasn’t from the King James Version, but still, you’d think it would sound as good.
We’ll have to wait to find love poems that convey more, well, love. I’m tempted to write a poem about unappealing marriage poems, that perhaps one day will end up in a slight compilation in a musty, dusty, used bookstore. Until then, this entry will have to suffice.
So off the interstate we turn, neither one of us able to resist a used bookstore. Having spent some long afternoons at Powell’s as well as stopping in used bookstores in just about every town we ever visit, we have proof on our bookshelves of the wisdom of stopping. Treasures – old tomes, newer children’s books, collections of poetry, art coffee table books, classic fiction, books that will end up as next season’s Christmas gifts, psychology and philosophy and history and comparative religion and books about food and wine and cooking ...
My husband, who is taller and can actually examine items on the top shelves - and can hold more books in his arms - always comes away with more selections than me – the lower-shelf browser with girl-sized arms. We stay as long as we can before the inevitable cat hair and dust overwhelm my system, and I reluctantly must head to the counter to make my purchases. I could stay longer, I imagine, if I brought my own oxygen tank.
But back to the backwater. We pull up in this very small town, only to realize we’d made the same decision four years ago, the adventuresome spirit of just popping off the highway to explore something cool and new slightly deflating. But we’re here, so we do what all married couples do – repeat the past. As soon as we’re in the door, we’ve confirmed, that yes, this is the same place. It may have 100,000 books, but that includes the ones piled all the way to the ceiling. And since it gets its inventory from the surrounding area, it has slightly less breadth and depth than if it were closer to anything mildly urban. So the odds of finding a treasure today are slim.
Off I head to Literature and Poetry; my husband heads to Psychology. My eye wanders over some compilations, some poets I’ve (of course) never heard of, and rests on a little white tome, just 6½ inches high, called, Marriage Poems. The cover promises a “sparkling collection of poems about virtually every aspect of matrimony” with contributions from Shakespeare, Omar Khayyám, D.H. Lawrence, Ovid and even the Song of Songs from the Old Testament.
We’d been feeling very couple-y on our road trip, as we had the luxury to spend hours discussing our relationship and our parenting, concluding that we’re just delighted with ourselves. We might have edited out some things, and put a positive spin on some of our less great bits, but it’s nice to spend time glorifying one another rather than a tempting, yet toxic, tug to find fault. Plus, we’re coming up to our anniversary. I figured I’d get the book, and we’d read love poems to each other that night. Not that we have a big history with doing this, but there have been the few times.
As we got back in to the car, with this as our sole purchase, and drove off, I started going through the pages. “Read me one,” my husband requested. I’d just finished the first one, and it was sing-songy and evoked an image of busty young maidens dancing around the May pole. I read it anyway. He was under-impressed. The second reading produced a vague sexual reference I’d missed the first time, but still nothing great. Just because I can’t resist, here’s the last stanza:
My husband will buy me a guinea gold ring,Thankfully, there’s no known author.
And at night he’ll give me a far better thing,
With two precious jewels he’ll be me adorning,
When I am his bride, on Monday morning.
Later that night, I kept pouring through the book, expectantly waiting for the ones we could read to each other to highlight our road-trip romance.
Except that I couldn’t find a single poem I liked. Even the segment from Song of Songs wasn’t as pleasing as the part that was in our marriage ceremony: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” I suppose mine wasn’t from the King James Version, but still, you’d think it would sound as good.
We’ll have to wait to find love poems that convey more, well, love. I’m tempted to write a poem about unappealing marriage poems, that perhaps one day will end up in a slight compilation in a musty, dusty, used bookstore. Until then, this entry will have to suffice.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Cave Dwelling
I went summer adventuring in the Lewis and Clark Caverns outside Three Forks, Montana. Went into the caves, down and down and down, through magnificent stalagmite and stalactite formations, past the colony of fluttering brown bats, as we clamored down, squatting at times, duck-walking, sliding down the slippery bits, careful not to hit our heads, then exclaiming in awe – again and again- at the next room-full of treasures, hearing and sometimes feeling the drip-drip-drip that is continuing to create these extraordinary configurations. Confronted the tiny prickles of fear about how much oxygen is in a cave, and whether humans in general should be in caves, and whether I, in particular, was safe, wondered whether I should have taken the guide up on her offer at “Decision Rock” – the last place on the tour where one could turn around, mount the 125 steps already descended, and go back to the cave opening. Whether I was asking just a bit more of myself than I should, since until that day I hadn’t quite known what spelunking was.I did what I know you’re supposed to do with fear – notice it, honor it, and put it aside as I went along, slowly picking my footing, taking pictures (hard to get good pix in a dark cave on a mediocre digital camera, but still I tried), and gasping with wide-eyed wonder at each new turn, each set of steps descended, each new mineral cache. My mind took several tries to comprehend the sign that read, “One mile high” at the point where we’d been constantly descending the cavern for over 90 minutes, and had reached a height that was one mile above sea level. I’m still processing the idea that each of the 600 carved steps required three days of a man’s labor – hauling materials in buckets in and out of the two mile path within the cave itself, not to mention carrying materials up the side of the mountain to reach the cave entrance.
Our tour guide sprinkled cave jokes (apparently there’s such a thing as cave humor) into her impressive information about the cave, its founders, the people who came after, and offered up explanations of all the different types of limestone formations. There was also a moment where the guide shut off her flashlight and plunged our group into darkness more complete than ever encountered in civilized life. She’d just finished her story of a guy who got trapped in the cave for 72 hours with no light, and ended up hallucinating, not knowing if he was lying down or standing up, crazed and blinded by darkness. I sidled close to my husband to hold his hand, the body connection a protective talisman as we were plunged into total blackness.After this, my fears of being in the cave were gone. I felt stoked and strong and brave and powerful and, at the same time, tiny and inconsequential in the grander scheme of amazing things on this Earth.
Near the end, the guide pointed her flashlight beam on an area of circuitous, curly, spindly formations, nothing like the others that grow vertically, as these spread horizontally as they curve and wind and meander. These, she said, are helictites, which she pronounced with a raw, guttural chhhh instead of a plain “h.” “Can you say, “helictites”?” she playfully asked our group of visitors, and I was the only one who could without even the tiniest hesitation.They seemed to have been made just for me – a Yiddish-sounding limestone formation as unique in the cave as my long curly locks in a sea of Montana tourists.
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