They were a staple of 80s self-help thinking,
Of Al Anon discussion, of counselors long on affirmations.
The notion that, when our worlds get ugly, when crazy thinking and fear make hash of the day and spaghetti of our brains, we could spirit ourselves away mentally to a place of remembered tranquility.
We were encouraged to envision that sacred place with all our senses: the taste of salt sea air, the whoosh of waves, light dancing across the water, sand damp on our feet.
We were to choose carefully. To be sure that no snake in the grass, so to speak, hid around the corner waiting to slither out and remind us of the dark circumstances that triggered our small insanities.
Situated in a cherished space, we could center ourselves, retreat, regroup, gain perspective.
I found the practice useful. Early in our courtship, Dave struggled with his particular demon, alcohol. Alternately sweet or sullen, defensive or expansive. I struggled with the kneejerk fear and hysteria of a Kansas teetotaler. An emotional Tilt-a-Whirl of a time.
During those days, my pictured sanctuary was Nick and Birdie’s Tumacacori courtyard, blue Sonoran desert mountains framing the sky, air several magnitudes drier than Montana’s, radiant-hot sun, cow-birds burbling, the essence of desert plants—mesquite, palo verde, ironwood, juniper—whose scents I could remember but never name, and, most of all, sheltering friendship.
Thirty years later, I am bemused, unsettled as I consider safe places. My shelf of pop psych books and their confident, almost glib recommendations were panaceas for middle-income, middle class folks. Their ideas were not wrong or all that flawed, but . . . precious, facile, shallow. I was able to buy books and to see counselors. To have lived and traveled enough to picture safe harbors, to choose oases of beauty and grace among my experiences. To have family and friends who met me with love and caring. Who welcomed me into their lives and hearts. All of which were and are luxuries for so many. Not even luxuries. Impossibilities. Unthinkable, unimaginable.
This Pandemic year in which the least able among us are dying the most, unattended, unnoticed by too many. Whole cultures and countries losing the heart of their populations. This Black Lives Matter year in which we celebrate one small, obvious correct decision shadowed by the time immemorial reality of no ethical or legal or moral decisions made on behalf of people of color. This Global Warming year in which our/my rapacious use of resources triggers the horrific, anguished demise of so many species. This Big Lie year animated by white male bullies who possess no skills or wisdom to maintain power other than depriving others of it.
The fact of the matter is that I have enjoyed, often without a breath of awareness, a life of safe places. To the extent that anyone can – barring natural disasters. I’ve never been hungry or incontrovertibly sick or homeless or disoriented by the demons of mental illness. I’ve never faced another human in an armed conflict. What tempests I thought I’ve borne, what moments of angst or discomfort I’ve known—on the scale of human experience—were negligible. Fleeting. My whole damn life has been a safe place.
And for what must be 50 percent of the world’s people, their whole lives have been nothing but dangerous places. Spaces of no rest, no security, no release from weariness and threat, no morning afters. At best, the possibility of safety consigned to a hoped-for afterlife sold by the snake oil salesmen of religion. The convenient nostrum offered by those who benefit from a world of blindly believing underclasses. A remedy, a sanctuary not even thought relevant to our planet’s “lesser” creatures.
Thirty years past the 80s therapies, I have managed to harvest and store trunksful of sweet memories—places that I can render three-dimensional, animated in my mind. And doing so provides magic carpet excursions away from whatever I don’t much like: Montana’s interminable dark and ice; a snoot full of dire political news; the self-loathing of another doughnut, a few manageable ailments.
On those occasions, you’ll find me in Florence, sitting on the edge of the fountain in the square facing the Hospital of the Innocents, the Ospedale degli Innocenti. I’ll be tuning out the city’s incessant motorcycle concert and wondering how that incredibly fashionable business woman navigates cobblestones in her four inch heeled boots. Who has lurked where I am sitting on cold stone, postponing their walk up to the marble turnstile, reaching beyond the grate to place their child, figuratively, into the hands of Mary and Joseph.
Or breathing in Puccini’s soaring arias in a candlelit, evening-cool deconsecrated church, the fug of soil uprooted in the search of a yet earlier church rising from under our feet.
Or, needing for a moment to feel eternity, at the edge of The Land’s high cutbank, beyond the stone-lined flower garden, standing in the pine and water perfumed updraft that carries the river’s conversation, gliding out as far as the eye can see over the Rockies.
But as year adds to year, I am increasingly grateful for my own safe harbor, my small warm home, dated, distinguished by an accretion of antiques, lit by the colors of Spain and Mexico, framed by my own blue mountains. And then, beyond even that nest, the safest of all places: being–just being. Knowing, now, that I am called to only two tasks: loving the hell out of this time and place and doing what small labors I can to create safe places for others. ©
