Between Ghosts and Grass Blades
Reflections on Mary Oliver That DO NOT Involve the "Wild and precious life" Quote
This piece is part of my ongoing practice of slowing down, noticing the world around me, and reconnecting with the parts of myself I left behind for a while. Mary Oliver remains one of my favorite guides back to presence.
“Attention Is the Beginning of Devotion” -Mary Oliver
A friend handed me Mary Oliver’s poems for my 40th birthday, and I didn’t know yet that they were about to become instructions for my life. I was at a point in my life where I was choosing to do big, scary things during a time when the world and parenting a school-aged child felt less than perfect. It was 2021, I had just come off of an intense year of remote school for my daughter and remote work for myself. Choosing to leap into a new organization with more responsibilities felt risky, but also necessary.
Many of the poems in the book were bite-sized, but required deep reflection from me. I found myself reading and rereading the same (seemingly) simple lines, amazed by how plainly, clearly she saw the world and then put those observations onto paper. At first glance, it might register as easy descriptions, but I could feel the weight of her very careful decisions about language – how she saw the world, herself, and the questions she sought answers to.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to live a whole life, not just a productive one. Mary Oliver feels like an anchor in that inquiry.
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
For her, the natural world and the world of ourselves (our minds, our bodies) were not separate. This was interesting to me because I have spent a lifetime with my spirit existing someplace other than where I physically am. I was a child with an intense imagination, I possessed the ability to create whole worlds and stories out of thin air. I deeply believed in magic existing in the world and when I daydreamed, played, or thought out loud, I was part of it.
As an adult, I have a sneaking suspicion that I was engaging in some maladaptive daydreaming. It felt like I would have thoughts so intense that my body stopped and I would get completely lost in them. It wasn’t until I was about 20 years old that someone (anonymously) gave me feedback in a class that when I stared off it was “highly unnerving” and “off-putting.” I had never considered how it looked and once I had that awareness, I never did it again, I couldn’t. The ability vanished.
Her poems felt like a bridge between the girl who lived in her imagination and the adult woman trying to relearn how to exist in her own body.
“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
Here I am, a whole lifetime later, finally (intentionally) working on existing in the present. Dabbling in things like mindfulness and meditation, but most importantly…noticing. Noticing the branches outside of my window, the smell of grass, or the crunch of leaves. Squirrels and bugs. Birds and rabbits. I continue to contain entire universes inside of my head and I still have a sneaking suspicion magic might be real, that’s simply the type of adult a kid like me grows up to be when the world doesn’t stop them.
Now that I’m noticing, I am also considering what it means to be here. Not just as a visitor, but as the author of my life, and as a character or an influence in the lives of others. I’m at an age where many of us are looking both ahead and behind. My 20’s and 30’s were like a haunted house in my brain, full of doors that lead to roads not taken. Mary Oliver taught me that ghosts quiet down when you pay attention to what’s alive.
I’ve learned you have to let those ghosts rattle their chains before you quiet them to examine the beauty of the life you have been able to live: the present, the now. (And honestly? I really like mine. It’s been pretty cool to be me.)
And, of course, in your 40’s you are also wondering about the future: the time and experiences that haven’t been written. What is my legacy? What impact have I made? What else can I do?
“You need empathy with it, rather than just reporting. Reporting is for field guides. And they’re great, they’re helpful, but that’s what they are. But they’re not thought provokers, and they don’t go anywhere. And I say somewhere that attention is the beginning of devotion, which I do believe. But that’s it. A lot of these things are said, but can’t be explained.”
I think this is where my wild imagination meets my burgeoning ability to notice. I’ve been told I have high emotional intelligence and empathy, but that is only how other people report their experience of me. Being present with myself and the natural world that Mary Oliver saw as one system will require building a bridge between parts of myself.
I’m still working out what this all looks like in this highly connected, online, and intensely indoors world I live in. Maybe this is what she meant. Attention isn’t devotion because it’s perfect. It’s devotion because it’s a practice.
I’m practicing. And if magic exists (and I still suspect it does) maybe it begins with noticing, perhaps I haven’t been too far off the mark this entire time.