mourning – 3 Coffees A Day

Season of Rebirth: Burning Man Temple and Calatrava’s Oculus

On the the blessings of living in the megalopolis of the DC to NYC corridor is the possibility of visiting beautiful sites mere hours of days apart. On Christmas, the opportunity presented to visit Calatrava’s Oculuson the World Trade Center site and just days later, the Best’s Temple for Burning Man at the Renwick. While I didn’t seek out each site for any sort of spiritual experience, both left me with pause given we are working through the season of rebirth, renewal — and new beginnings.

The Temple as well as the Oculus honor those that we mourn and desire and the eyes are naturally drawn skyward — which for the Oculus brings a rush and multitude of layered memory. Calatrava’s soaring design is meant to embody just that — a bird flying from the hand of a child. The innocence of that image is felt — and the color in the evening, resembles the sky on that day most of us remember clearly — a day that started like most other fall days. The bird metaphor embodied in the design, one can hope is that the spirits of those lost are now free and while evil struck, a return to innocence is possible.

For the Temple, the fresh and fragrant smell of balsa wood also elludes to hope, while reverent lighting provides a moment of heavenly breath. Visitors’ messages to loved ones link the Temple to the site of the Oculus where messages were left for days and months after the fall of the Towers — perhaps it is the written word that provides a moment of renewal in our belief that those we love are not truly gone from our grasp — that memories are closer than we think.

While the Temple is set to come down on January 5, there are still a few days left to experience the installation but the Oculus offers a permanent destination for reflection.

On the train again…

img_20190420_120241 I’m rolling into the Baltimore station yet again, and since my last trip north on the exact same train, in the quite car again, where I sat just two months ago when our train struck a human on the tracks. Since we pulled out of the last station, I’ve been head down in my book, hoping for the best — we’re cruising through Baltimore’s tunnels now and should hopefully arrive at the station without incident. For weeks after the accident, I scanned the news for mention of the poor soul that was struck – that poor woman whose life will never be the same. For now, it seems that we’re cruising slowly, and peacefully into the station.

Several questions have dogged me since that train ride in March, and all of those questions revolve around trauma. May is Mental Health Awareness month and since today is the last of the month, I find myself really pondering how we as a society can emphasize the importance of mental health check-ups. Part of the marketing campaign for the month revolves around the phrase “breaking the stigma” — which I completely support; part of breaking the stigma is turning things from oddities into routines.

For a woman to find herself on a set of train tracks — most certainly involved trauma, not just the accident, but whatever brought her to that place. Because news coverage is so weak, it is impossible to know her circumstance before or after the accident; but no one finds themselves near train tracks on a well-known busy commuter corridor in a major metropolitan area without having lived through some trauma. And what of the train driver and other staff that saw the accident yet could not prevent it? What of the first responders — who must see accidents like this on a regular basis? Trauma is all around us, yet our American culture remains steadfast in its neglect of the fact that the eyes cannot un-see, the brain cannot un-learn and the flesh cannot un-feel.

We must do more.

#traintravel: the unexpected

IMG_20190311_083126 I often take photos as I ride the train — I firmly believe it is the only way to see America. Road travel, unless using secondary roads, does not provide a real glimpse into America’s cities and rural areas — but even that view is limited. To get into the real America, it is essential to get into alleyways; I use this same methodology when looking for a new place to live as well — you can tell a lot about a neighborhood or town by what you can find in any given alleyway, be it trash or gardens.

While heading north yesterday, I had just snapped this photo in West Baltimore as our train came to a stop — not a jarring stop, but an unexpected one as I gazed down from the overpass where my car #3 was perched. I felt victorious when I boarded the train yesterday — with the help of the wonderful Amtrak Red Cap, I was the first one to board the quiet car. Frequent Amtrak riders know that the quiet car is the best — no cell phone calls, usually more room and people are just busy working or reading. The quiet car also doesn’t carry the extra cost of business class; as a plus the WiFi is generally more stable in the quiet car for its proximity to the business car, unlike the complete unreliability of connectivity in the general cars.

As we came to our stop, I was just finishing the last of my weekly prep for classes when one of the conductors announced, “We have a train emergency. We need everyone to stay calm. We have a tresspasser on the tracks, and we’ve had an incident.” Now, because lots of my fellow passengers had headphones on, not many heard this announcement. It’s not unusual for a train to stop to let other, faster train traffic through at odd spots along our northward route so at this point, no one is even thinking it’s a disaster to be sitting on an overpass. By the second announcement, people are starting to peek up over chair backs to ask neighbors what is going on. By the conductor’s second announcement, we know the truth – our train has struck someone. By the third announcement, we know the victim is female. By the fourth announcement, we now know that EMS is on the way — and from my vantage point on the overpass, I can see the ambulance pass underneath our perch. I start sending notes to my family to let them know where I am; and a forward note to my meeting still several cities away that I may be late. Then I google the accident.

Train accidents are more common that we all may think. The big ones, cars or trucks stuck on the tracks or cars racing trains make the televised news. People on the tracks rarely make headlines, and in 2017 over 2,100 people were struck by moving trains. This is no small number, and in fact is a crisis. Train tracks are usually fenced off, hence the conductor’s announcement of a trespasser on the tracks; but this hardly means tracks are inaccessible to humans. The report of our accident described the female victim as, “attempting to cross the tracks” — yet, there is no reason to cross the tracks at this urban, overpass setting. No reason.

We were allowed to move slowly into Baltimore after EMS departed and an inspection of the tracks by law enforcement; and allowed to leave our train to quickly transfer to another headed north to reach our destinations as our train’s crew was pulled out of service and the train put to rest until a full investigation took place. I learned from a fellow passenger, who had been on another train that struck someone that we were lucky — based on the shortness of our delay, the victim was alive. Had the victim been a fatality, our delay suspended above West Baltimore, would’ve been several hours of shelter-in-place. Lucky is not a word I’d use; fortunate maybe, that we only lost an hour of our morning and that we have our health to race to another train, up a flight of stairs and down another. Fortunate that we ourselves did not attempt to cross the tracks in front of a train going upwards of 50 mph as it rounds a bend into downtown Baltimore. Fortunate that we did not suffer from whatever reason the victim chose to cross the tracks, and fortunate that we do not bear the injuries that must’ve resulted from such an impact. The victim was reported by local news to not only be alive, but alert. Alert most certainly is not fortunate.

Meetings aside, I spent most of the day searching for news…any update on the victim. Does she have a family? Does she have friends to rush to her side? Her life is most certainly going to be difficult going forward. And what of our train driver? Does Amtrak offer the needed support for what he and the rest of the staff may’ve observed? Too many questions that deserve answers — and further investigation. I still believe that train travel is the only way to really see into America’s collective soul — and today, with so many world events shaking, it is worth a few moments of respite and introspective concentration to really understand how one victim, on one rail line, is so representative of all that ails America.

Snow Angels

Yet another snow event has blanketed the near-South, in winter wonder — this time not so much powder as last time, a little more wet and without a doubt this morning will be an icey mess. My family is struggling through a new health diagnosis for one member of our small team; and it is into this snow that I walked as I pondered the angels among us. While I am not the person of the strongest faith (in anything), I do try to take my time in nature as a gift from above and I regularly see the messages — not always the best messages, but clear interventions nonetheless. When I see a bluebird, I know it’s my gram sending a direct dispatch to me to either wake-up, or get moving — metaphorically, intellectually or physically — as standing still was just not her thing.

Yesterday, as I headed out into this scene the wind was starting its whip and froth — having just driven home a few nights before in a severe storm (in which a tornado touched down, too much to think about digesting that right now) I was a bit tentative as the first stings of wet snow scratched my cheeks. But as I walked on, the most glorious circular wind grasped the top of a rather overgrown tropical tree on the corner, and down plopped powdery-marshamallow like snow-drops all over the street. It was as if, a leaf full of snow gathered itself into a froth and joined the circular wind, and down came the goblins — or angels to smatter and splatter the pavement — and our coats.

For every frosty landscape, of mind or time, perhaps there really are angels, or breaths of air that buoy and comfort us. Perhaps not naturally, and maybe it is just wishful thinking. For today, I will be on the hunt for the wind to see if might just produce another angelic moment.

Pennies from Heaven

From late summer and as this autumn progresses — it seems like the constant theme is loss. While the wild colors of fall leaves in the mid-Atlantic are glorious as always, this year each falling leaf is accompanied by a sadness that a once beautiful, green, living life has passed onto the other side — the whithering side where memories grow dust in the farthest reaches of the mind. Grief and mourning are constants in life of course — there can be no birth without its opposite of death; it is also at this time of year when temperatures turn colder and cozy scarves abound that songs on the radio proclaim as ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ are endless. Autumn serves as a not subtle reminder, that to move towards rebirth we must plunge into darkess — and thanks for daylight savings time, darkness comes ever so early during this season.

On the day of the most recent human passing, pennies appeared at nearly every turn on my daily walk — my cousin has reminded me regularly since the death of her brother in August how pennies rain down on us from heaven. Bing Crosby sang ‘Pennies from Heaven’ in a 1936 film of the same title; other famous artists of the time recorded the song as well including Billie Holiday and Tommie Dorsey — a decade later Frank Sinatra, then Tony Bennet, Rosemarie Clooney — the list is long, and a list I never would’ve thought to look for, had I not been nearly tripping over pennies. The Sinatra version can be heard here: http://www.metrolyrics.com/pennies-from-heaven-lyrics-frank-sinatra.html — the most poignat lyric, “If you want the things you love, you must have showers.” And so must we have autumn — with all its sadness. While working towards the light and all its meanings from religious to earth-bound and metaphorical — the real movement is finding the beauty in those dusty memories that contradicts the raw placidness of falling leaves. Autumn is death in living reality. It is often said that memory fades with time, or that memories are enhanced to inaccruate levels of enlightened delusion — but perhaps not so, perhaps memories are the lights that carry and sustain us (however contrary to historic record). What is light if not manifest joy? What is a scuffed, or shimmering penny in the wane light of a fall afternoon, if not a tiny speck of light tossed into our path for remembrance?