Tea with Nina Simone

There is a sound...a sound that opens my being and inhabits my bones for a while...and when that sound...meets a mood...and that mood meets a way to write...the lines fall out a certain way...like a picture of what I feel.  

“Nina Simone” by Stanley Chow

Tea with Nina Simone

Singer woman with a lived-in voice,

how I ache to climb the steps of those piano keys,

bending into the curve of your voice and

riding upside on the slide of your top note wail.

Mm. From there, that view, 

oh I’d throw my arms open and 

dive in dancing, I would...

Confident that air would catch 

beneath the canopy of my soul.

I will sigh when the song

is done, I will. Sigh

and sip my tea steaming

on the coaster beside me.

Me, in a wingback chair,

eyes closed and heart still swaying 

inside that waterfall 

of sound and liquid soul.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

What Others Notice

A couple from Ireland stopped in front of where I was seated on a bench, having lunch in the shade at the Public Gardens.

“That looks absolutely amazing…,” they said to me of my meal.

I looked up at them.

“Honestly, it is…Every single thing about it is divine. The juice, the colour, the taste, the texture, the context…(I laughed) I am so enjoying the pleasure of my lunch…”

“It’s why we felt like we could stop,” said the wife.

“?”

“You looked like you were so happy, simply eating a beautiful plum.”

Vacation in my Backpack

I Carry Vacation with Me

My brain needs space to rest and roam; my heart needs room to feel. 

A book in hand is a key to a place where ‘away’ becomes the real.

Wizards, mansions, and moors and trains; detectives, urchins and spies,

this and that and now and then and here and there, all fly.

With a turn of the page, the tuck of a chin, a settling into the chair,

I am elsewhere for a while, I am breathing different air.

So should you see me gazing off and not quite where I appear,

I’ve gone inside this elsewhere place…I’ll be back in a bit, right here.

When you find me, wherever you find me, may it seem when you cast a look

that I am refreshed for the journey I’ve taken with the passport of a book.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

The Gardens

Halifax Public Gardens

It’s textures that captivate me, and colours.

And nature’s infinite compassion 

for me still having this idea

that not so secretly pleases my spirit: 

if I look long enough, could let go

just so, I’d be on the inside and know

the interiority of a stone, the expansiveness

of blue, and the shiny tingle of perfection

when light and shape and Beingness align.

People 

tend to mind if the eye dwells too long 

on a line or a curve,

on a sway or on a softness.

Other wild elements invite me to stillness,

to a looseness of mind and grandeur of heart

that sees the tracery holding panes of divinity 

in the molecules that call to me 

in the raw spectacle of a garden.

Beauty in the simplest; radiant complexity.

Harmonies to make me weep and contrasts

that leave me breathless and believing still

that being caught-up in wonder is 

an ache of the senses and accessible glory.

It is good for the soul

to have a place to wander free,

to behold and be permitted

the revelation of awe.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Buechner and the Beach

Over the years, I keep returning to two quotations... One by Walt Whitman--Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large and I contain multitudes.  And this one by Frederick Buechner.  Both speak of letting fullness dwell within; of letting what is most real dwell within.  And that living with fullness, living with the inner multitudes--our own and those of others, is living a life that knows something of the depth, the honor, the difficulty, of what it is to love.

A visit to Lawrencetown Beach

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. 

—Frederick Buechner

The news and a walk afford

half-assurance of this truth:

Bombs, borders, detentions,

inhumanity, insufficiency, 

desperation, aching humanity.

The other portion,

that is our work of discovery.

To believe a shell can hold the sea if I hold her to my ear;

that time has birthed geodes and fossils and you and me;

that simple is both elegant and enough.

And don’t be afraid.

Of either. Beautiful or terrible.

And how could I,

here with you, not alone.

With the sky and the tides and open horizon.

With apples and strawberries

and clean cold water for lunch;

with laughter and music and a road with a view;

with the lived truth that weighs in pockets: Beautiful and Terrible; 

and with unafraid hearts that have heard the ocean tumble across the stones.

Have heard her tumble and found her sublime.

Have felt the grit and the smooth she leaves

and tasted her on the wind.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible.

Courageously alive.

—Kimberly M. King, RSCJ 

Photos in Words (Mostly...)

19 June, 2019...In the heady coffee-cinnamon humidity of No. 9 Coffeeshop. Paul Simon overhead. Your colours were a brief and glorious glimpse of flair this morning. The peach gradient on the horizon, rather spectacular. And the clouds and trees upon the water—as though they needed a reflection to adjust night flattened branches or to fresh fluff their vapor in preparation for the new day. And thank you for the company of the woman to my right who also has a book and seems quietly pleased for the caffeinated, sweet spiced, stillness we share. 

20 June, 2019... 7:50 AM Public Gardens on a bench at the Summer Street side point of a triangle using the large gazebo and Horticulture Hall as the other two points. Something I have noticed:  People stop to talk to the ducks who search out their breakfast in the dew-cool grasses.  And, I am one of them.  I am interested in the fact that these wobbly diners choose to walk beneath the benches and not around them.  So it was again this morning when two females brushed by my ankle with only a slight rolling crunch of pea gravel beneath their paddlers and the gentle-edged mur-mur-mur-mur  of each one offering aloud her private morning commentary without expectation of a response from the other.  The first one turned to look at me—She had a curly blade of grass across her beak.  Condensation had stuck it there like a handlebar moustache.  I thought to mention it to her as she tilted her head in assessment of my presence.  Apparently I posed no threat and she was content with her adornment because the two of them waddled out a place for themselves in the grass directly across from me.  When I stood to leave, I thanked them for their company.

21 June, 2019...Pouring rain...thought ‘Ugh,´ if I don´t leave the house now, I´ll never go out today... So off I went on a circuit of the Gardens and then into one of my favorite haunts.   I walk in to witness two of the baristas teaching themselves how to juggle with sweet potatoes. Me: If you have apples it’s easier... The two of them: You can juggle?? WAIT, Here! And they toss me three apples. The next fifteen minutes or so are filled with laughter and a lesson on the basic principles of juggling. And then I sat down and did some work... The world is full of fresh hells and is unraveling at so many seams...yet, there is still joy to be noted and simple good fun to be had while working to make it better for more. 

The Divine Octave

Several mornings of my recent retreat were spent on a wharf in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I was drawn there for the spacious quiet, for the water, the horizon, the creak of the pilings and cries of the birds, and, honestly, the comfortable chairs close enough to the edge to prop up my short legs and with arms wide enough for a notebook. The sun was warm, the boat traffic local, the peace expansive… It was a satisfying perch. The pleasing “protractor gone mad” angles of the boats, their masts, and their rigging; the angles of the wharf itself, the size and bright colours of the chairs, the warmth in which I was steeping…it all served to both ground and free me. This was helped along by the book I was reading—Saudade by Anik See. So far, each one of these beautifully bound essays has reminded me of the smooth pocket-stones I carry with me. Weighty, present, solid, company. Each one has a story to go with it, each one has its place. Just as my hand is sometimes drawn to hold a particular one of the stones at a given moment, I selected a particular essay to read one of the mornings at the wharf. Little could I have known ahead of time the ache of beauty and aha and YES! that would tumble my heart like ocean water burnishing sea glass. 

The essay, “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole,” has to do with proportion, design, what is organically pleasing, and the artistry of that.

The easiest way to picture the golden section in nature is to imagine the cross-section of a nautilus shell, growing outward neatly; beautifully in proportion to the previous later of spiral. It is this relationship that is ever appealing to us, wither in the form of the human body or in musical scales, or in the relationship of text to a page. Bringhurst’s discussion of the golden section is crucial to the understanding of design, and why certain things work and others don’t. In other words, if double-square books (i.e. books whose width-length proportion us 1:2) look good to you, it’s probably because the relationship of proportion is the same relationship as found between the notes of a simple octave: a primary ‘visual chord’ has been created, according to Bringhurst. Anik See, “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole” Saudade, P. 67-8

A ‘primary visual chord!’ How I delight in the mixing of the senses there! And, how easy to translate that into primary flavour chords in cooking; primary rhythmic chords created through sentence structure; primary aural chords in line break choices when writing poetry…. Again and again, the call to pay attention. To be absolutely present and keenly aware of the effect desired, the effect achieved… yet, 

In choosing the proportions of type and spacing, as well as the proportions of the page, a harmony should be suggestive, not obvious. Anik See, “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole” Saudade, P. 69

Again, so broadly applicable. I think there’s a reason limericks are only five lines long. They can be wonderful nuggets of humour and yet are also exceedingly obvious in rhythm and rhyme scheme. Milk and mashed potatoes harmonize obviously. Paprika and balsamic vinegar in right relationship—who’d have guessed?? Yet, beautiful flavour emerges from that dance.

The key…the struggle…the fun of the process…is the right relationship piece of artistic creation…

A good design will mix math and spontaneity, exactness and free-hand proportions, because the eye needs to be directed, but it also needs to have room to wander so it doesn’t feel manipulated or stuck. Anik See, “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole,” Saudade, P. 69

So too the ear, the tastebuds…and it occurred to me out there on the wharf…so too the heart, the Spirit…And Glory, doesn’t God provide for that…the golden section that is the spiralling out of life, of gift, of experience, wonder, awe, challenge, Love, pain, suffering, discovery, revelation, giving, receiving, dying, rising…. And sometimes we need to find ourselves somewhere other than where we usually are to notice, to take that in…to again tune our senses to the divine octave at play in creation.

This came to me just before I put the bookmark in, packed my bag, rose from the bright green chair on the wharf and noticed that there was a jellyfish in the water…. I can’t tell you for exactly how long I knelt there, captivated, watching it pulse, scrunch, move…pulse, scrunch, move…rest…rest…rest…pulse, scrunch, move… making music I could see and making it with calculation and grace alike...with no discernible direction and undeniable purpose.

The precision has to slip away so that what matters most is the text or image on the page. It is exactly like jazz. It bops and squeals and roils and you play or listen and beam, but you never, ever, ask how it’s done. That knowledge—that part of the process is long past and you are entirely satisfied just being there to put your fingers on it, to listen, or look, or read: to appreciate it. Anik See, “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole” Saudade, P. 71-2

And I thought about the Psalmist who wrote of the Inescapable God… What I know is that you made me, you are with me, you encircle me, no matter where, no matter what, you Are…the holy and mysterious golden proportion of Love…and that knowledge is beautiful and just a bit overwhelming. And I am grateful.