Dear Ones,
Today is a day of mourning. Found Art Friday goes black and back to its root. We are grieving the loss (too soon) of a very dear friend of thirty years; an amazing poet, teacher, mentor. Her name, Stacy Doris, a muse to many:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/702
Stacy is responsible, in part, for this blog of
Homeland Inspiration even existing since it was she who suggested this medium to me a few years ago.
Today, there is no room in our brain for stray images as we find our way through the thicket of it sinking in. We build a low stool to sit on as we go down to earth to share the heaviness. We comb through memories of gladness that we were able to be close friends with such an extraordinary person, one with such high standards for giving the right kind of attention to others, for heft in thinking, for how to be playful and precise with the powers of language, for how to tackle an illness, and so much much more.
We met in college through words, poems, and bonded over art and writing as a way of living in the world and being friends. We had cups of coffee or tea together and talked about what mattered to us and laughed 'til we cried. Once we bought bikes at The Goodwill and rode them down such a big hill in the rain that we became dolphins. Somehow, we spent the rest of the afternoon fishing for bluefish off a dock along the river with some postal workers. Another time, we got to ask a man in a thick white rowboat in a choppy ragged turquoise sea to take us to the end of the world, Finis Terre, the farthest point west off the coast of Spain, just because it was named that, and there was no other way to get there, and we were
determined. We Found a hole in the roof where we could look for moons and stars. Our education spilled into exploration. We set out to test boundaries, find new edges, and forge truth sockets in our life awareness and in our art forms.
We jumped through each others unconventional sentence hoops, and shared our narratives over cups of tea as the chapters of our lives unfolded; in-between and alongside were months, years, spouses, babies, books, jobs, and different kitchen tables, ... with no break in our rhythm of understanding, questing.
So outstanding a person, so terrific an inspiration, so huge a loss.
