Some Muses Are Real

There's a what-if day, and then there's the real thing.

And in LaChapelle Lande, that means getting up every day, making coffee, taking a short walk to the nearby park, coming back home, and writing.

Then taking a brief break for lunch, my special concoction of yogurt and nuts, and to read the paper.

Then getting back to writing.

Then after too much time spent sitting, getting up from the writing to move. Which means doing physical labor in my apartment, the best thing for both my back and the writing.

And even for the apartment.

Following my short list of indoor chores, I get to stretch out on the rug or my rarely used yoga mat and read for a couple of hours from the pile of books that litter my bookcase, every table and chair, and the floor.

All of which are related to my writing.

Then before heading out to the pub or to join friends for dinner, a movie, a bike ride, I do a bit of revising of what I've written.

Fortunately, I'm inching along on this particular writing project, aka Book II, with the help of some of my friends who actually want to read the damn thing. Which, of course, is why they are my friends.

So the pressure is on, with self-imposed deadlines looming, including finding an agent. And that all adds up to my putting this fun little blog on hold for the near future.

I will miss posting my idle thoughts and related stories on aging, but I'm guessing that much of what I would write here will find its way into the book.

And so, my loyal blog followers, you, too, may consider yourselves members of my Muse Group, for which I am truly grateful.

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For Book II updates, feel free to email me at madmoon55@hotmail.com. And no worries, I won't get distracted from the writing. I'm no longer online at home, a decision I made to, well, not get distracted from the writing. ✍✍✍

Composing a What-If Day

If I were retired, I imagine a typical day would go something like this:

I’d wake up without benefit of an alarm clock;

I’d drink a large cup of coffee while reading several newspapers (in print, of course);

I’d text the most interesting newsy tidbits to friends;

I’d write in my journal, letting the pen or keyboard take me wherever my wandering mind was inclined to go;

I’d finally get out of my pjs, do more back stretches, dress for the season, then go outside. I'd wander at will in the neighborhood, maybe with binoculars, or a shopping bag to pick up necessary vittles on the way back, including a bowl of chicken noodle or split pea soup from the corner restaurant;

Back home, and before enjoying the soup, I’d sneak one of the lemon cookies I’d bought the day before at the local bakery;

Following lunch, I’d walk up to the library, read a bunch of magazines, maybe more newspapers, and schmooze with librarians and fellow patrons;

Then I’d browse the book and DVD aisles and, before checking out a bunch, I’d take a quick look at the book sale section;

Leaving the library, I’d get the bus north to the grocery store for another round of vittles, including Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt and a bottle of wine, red or white, depending;

I’d get the bus south, after schmoozing with my fellow riders in the bus shelter, and stop at home to drop off the DVDs, books, ice cream, and wine;

Then I’d head over to the pub for a pint of Harp and whatever conversations I’d start or luckily join, many of which would be brogue-laden;

On the way home from the pub, I’d stop off for to-go Chinese or Mexican or Greek or Czech or Italian;

Before sitting down to dinner and a DVD—sometimes two—I’d sneak some ice cream and return texts and phone calls, usually to make upcoming plans to go to lunch or dinner, see a movie, visit a museum, watch a ball game, basket or base, or listen to live music.

Now of course I’m not retired—don’t ever plan to be—but as a practicing introvert, I do need a couple of these what-if days per week, though with an important addition: writing. Weaving it around and through all of the reading, the pubbing, the schmoozing, and spoonfuls of Cherry Garcia, making my way eventual way to some publishable stuff.

But in the end it doesn't matter what kind of day it is, because I know that much of it will find its way into and through my writing.

Lucky me.

In Memorium: Mary Oliver

I first discovered the poet Mary Oliver, in Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.  In Williams’ introduction to the book, she used the first five lines from Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese”:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

         love what it loves.”

For someone, especially female, raised a strict Catholic in the 1950s, those words struck a chord, affirming what I’d felt as I grew to adulthood: That I was body as well as soul, a “soft animal” alive in, and with, the natural world.

Eventually Oliver’s words—almost a command—would release me from the worst of the religious dogma I’d been forced to accept.

But what liberates also constrains.

The body, unlike the soul, which I translate as spirit, diminishes and dies. (And, if we’re lucky, over many decades of living and loving.)

But Oliver never shrank from this awareness either, and so her poetry invites us to “love what it loves” by paying attention to the world we live in. Just as she did with a grasshopper she  encountered out walking through nearby fields.

She describes and reflects on this small moment in her poem The Summer Day,” ending with these lines:

“Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?”

As for Oliver’s own precious life, it ended last month, at her home in Florida, at age 83. And having spent her life observing and describing her experiences in both the human and natural world, she was ever mindful of death, including her own.

Here are the final three stanzas of her poem, “When Death Comes,” written in 2006:

“When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

“I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

The Move

To my loyal blog readers:

I am sorry to be so tardy with a new post, but I moved two weeks ago today, and 26.5 miles away.

The move went about as perfectly as it could, but the settling in has been complicated by two things: the crazy weather here in the Chicago area, and the back pain I sustained while packing, then carrying stuff down downstairs and upstairs.

Again, and again, and again.

Guess I ain't as young as I used to be, eh? Ah, well, if nothing else, pain does humble one, especially making us grateful for those moments, sometimes seconds, when it seems to moderate. Gratitude being another necessary ingredient of aging.

And so I am gratefully on the mend, and will be posting next week about the poet Mary Oliver, who died last week.

2019: The Purpose-Driven Year

Imagine the thrill of reading the following editorial in the Chicago Tribune’s New Year’s Day edition: 

“Boomers, remember your commitment. There's still time to save the world.”

Talk about a way to start 2019. It’s almost as if the editors follow my blog, especially given this particular sentence: “Find a purpose beyond yourself.”

On the other hand, maybe they read about the summer workshop I offered at The Newberry Library in Chicago: “The Purpose of Aging: Aging with Purpose.”

Here’s that description, slightly amended to reflect how that workshop and the response to it inspired my upcoming series of lectures and forthcoming book:

The news is no longer new: The Boomer Generation—those between the ages of 54 and 72—has changed the way we age. Not only are Boomers living longer than any previous generation, but are doing so in better health and more productively. 

This longevity bonus—or “Gift of Years,” as author Joan Chittister calls it—may even benefit those of us born before the Boomers, and certainly after.

In Carol’s lectures, workshops, and forthcoming book, she explores how we might use our gift of age with more intention, purpose, and meaning. In the process, she offers specific practices to help us create and manage this most challenging and rewarding life transition.

And part of what makes it both challenging and rewarding, in my humble opinion, is the choice to age with purpose. But how do find our purpose as we continue aging? And how does that particular purpose reward us?

Questions worth considering, eh?

Maybe the Trib piece could help answer them. Start here, with the opening paragraphs:

What’s next, baby boomers? You started turning 65 in 2011. Millions of you will continue to cross that threshold until 2030.

In your long-ago brash youth, you fashioned yourselves as wild-haired but deeply committed revolutionaries, America’s best hope to end poverty, prejudice and injustice. The times, they were a-changin’, for the better.

Sorry to say, you fell short in every category. You didn’t outperform the Greatest Generation (what’s greater than greatest?), which extinguished the Axis threat and created the modern world.

Now you’re signing up for Medicare and Social Security — rites of passage that make many of you cringe.

And to continue—which I highly recommend—click here:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-baby-boomers-65-20181129-story.html

Focus Group on Aging

In preparation for writing my second book, which will be on aging, I’m hoping to get feedback from people 50+ about their experiences of growing older. What are they thinking and feeling as they move through mid-life into their 60s, 70s, and beyond?

To that end, I’m offering a free program at the Center for Life & Learning at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, on Wednesday, January 30, 2019 from 1:00 - 3:00 pm.

Here’s the official description from the Center’s website:

In addition to writing, Carol LaChapelle has conducted writing and journal writing workshops for the past thirty years. Her newest offering, The Purpose of Aging: Aging with Purpose, encourages people to continue creating their lives as they age.

Inspired by the positive response to the workshop, Carol is focusing her second book on the topic of aging with purpose. She envisions it as both resource and guide to this most challenging and rewarding life transition.

In preparation for writing the book, Carol is offering this free program at the Center for Life and Learning. It is an invitation to people fifty and beyond to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings about aging. The conversation will explore what elements of mind, body, spirit, and story might help us move beyond midlife with more intention and purpose.

Carol LaChapelle is a Chicago-based writer, teacher, and the author of Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Stories. Her essays have appeared in America magazine, The Writing Group Book, and on www.nextavenue.org. She blogs about this “new” old age at forboomersandbeyonders.blogspot.com.

If you—or anyone you know—might want to attend, please click on the link, then select Free Lectures from the list. Once there, you can register.

http://www.fourthchurch.org/cll/programs.html

Also, if you know of other venues that might want to offer this program, please do contact me at madmoon55@hotmail.com or 773.981.2282.

Finally, I wish all my readers a meaningful and stress-free holiday, and all the best for 2019.

Style Stories

I’ve never been accused of being stylish. And, if for some reason I got close, it didn’t last long.

I credit my rather utilitarian approach to dressing up—or down, as the case may be—to many things, including being a fat kid; wearing uniforms in high school; and growing up female and Catholic in the ‘50s. Translation: no drawing attention to one’s looks, one’s body, else you become an occasion of sin for a young man.

Despite all that, once I graduated and started to make my way in the world, I made reasonably successful attempts to look attractive, especially after losing a ton of weight in my early 20s. These included wearing skirts, nylons, and high heels, and using make-up, if sparingly.

Then came the ‘60s, when hippie wear ruled and the women’s movement urged us to minimize body and maximize brain. Sounded good to me. I could read and write way better than I could coordinate an outfit or tie a scarf.

Besides, except for books, I hated to shop. And the more choices available—the racks and racks of shoes and dresses and accessories—the dizzier I got.

As I’ve aged, it’s gotten worse (or better?). I clothes shop only when I absolutely must, and whatever I buy and end up wearing (not always the same thing) must be washable, durable and affordable.

And if also fashionable, well, great.

All of which is context for why I so much enjoyed a recent essay on aging and fashion in the Washington Post, “Why I gave up on ‘flattering’ clothing,” by Alison Gary, the editor of the style blog Wardrobe Oxygen. 

Now her style story is not the same as mine, but I think many of my readers will appreciate her journey. Here are some excerpts:

When I turned 40, I started to slowly question my choices, easing up on some of those hard-and-fast rules. I worked so hard and for so long to fit my shape into the ideal of my Barbies in their Scotch tape-cinched Kleenex dresses. I was exhausted.

Some rules I broke out of necessity. After I gave birth to my daughter, I developed plantar fasciitis and couldn’t wear heels. I tried. Lord, I tried. It went away, and I went back to heels — and then developed a fallen arch. I have now embraced my collection of Birkenstocks, brogues, flats and funky sneakers.

[W]e are square pegs and a lot of fashion is round holes. We try to shove ourselves into those round holes with compression garments, uncomfortable shoes, and over-shopping thinking there’s that perfect something that will make us suddenly chic. Style comes from within you, not within your closet. You are fabulous just the way you are. You deserve clothing that doesn’t require so much effort and so little payback.

And finally:

The older I get, the better a relationship I have with my body. I no longer want to punish it for not fitting an ideal, but pamper it for how well it’s supported me all these years. 

To read the entire piece:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/30/why-i-gave-up-flattering-clothing/?utm_term=.3e05ac6bc94b