“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
―Mary Oliver
Summer, as we typically imagine it, is a time for reveling in the lushness of life; verdant greenery, long, syrupy days and endless balmy nights. It symbolizes the fruits of our labor, our reward for surviving the endless gray annals of winter and spring. In summer, we are meant to find fullness and fulfillment, to immerse ourselves in a season during which our cup of human experience runneth over.
But even as nature does her thing, the universe does not bow to our whims and expectations of it, and so instead the heat of this summer has been fueled mostly by the fire which has burned most of my best laid plans to ash. Canceled flights and wayward travels, lost opportunities, dashed hopes. Truths that became lies and loved ones who became strangers and the path I assumed I was walking felled with charred branches, suddenly unpassable.
Compounding these frustrations, this feeling that I was hitting a wall at a hundred miles an hour, that everything had gone up in flames, is the fact that summer in New York City is a furnace in and of itself. The temperature seemingly hovers permanently around 90 degrees with humidity bursting at the seams, each day an onslaught of sudden torrential rain, air conditioners dripping from every window, ankle-deep puddles accumulating on every street corner. Dignity and decorum go out the window during summer in New York, and so for months you show up places dripping in sweat, covered in mosquito bites and patchwork quilts of sunburns on your skin. As I watched one European vacation after the next tick by on my Instagram feed (did literally everyone go to Italy??) and dreamt of a million ways to use my stagnant vacation days, I longed to leave the city; for Maine or Key West or Mexico or France. But what I longed for most, above and beyond a change of scenery and new places to tick off on my mental map, was community. For kindred souls, for confirmation that I was not alone in the pervasive feeling that the world—particularly my world, seemingly collapsing in on itself day after day—was often too much, that I was not crazy for falling apart at the seams.
In recent months, as the aforementioned collapse has continued apace, I’d finally begun exploring the possibility of sharing with and publishing my poetry for the world—or at least close friends and confidants, anyway. Outing myself as a poet, in a sense. And so when I Googled different variations of “New York + Poetry” and came across the Poetry Society of New York, and soon discovered a summer camp for poets listed under upcoming events, there was no question that I had to go. The fact that my mom had some months ago recommended a podcast hosted by one of the instructors on the roster, Kate Belew, felt like another sign that I was at last on the right track. Synchronicity. Finally, mercifully.
I had my reservations, naturally, about using my hard-earned vacation days and money to attend an adult summer camp centered around poetry, and doing so with dozens of people I’d never met. But I reasoned with myself that wherever I went, even the Caribbean or south of France or the Arctic Circle, I’d still be the same person there. I’d still come back as myself. A poetry camp, I thought, had the potential to teach me some things, to push the dial of my life one way or another.
And so, after numerous emails inquiring about logistical details such as the availability of electricity and running water and transportation to the camp, I took the plunge and bought my ticket to ride. I carpooled from Manhattan with a couple of other attendees, and we chatted during the entire three-hour journey upstate, winding through Woodstock and into the Catskill Mountains as we left the city further and further behind. We arrived at golden hour, crawling down a gravel road to the most beautiful white farmhouse overlooking an evergreen valley that reminded me of home on the opposite coast, to wood being chopped and canvas tents being pitched around a glistening freshwater pond. I set about staking my own tent by a babbling creek, and as I lay in it, taking in the stillness of the late-afternoon heat, the softness of the grass beneath my feet, the distant voices exchanging hellos as each new person arrived, I felt my bones settling and my soul stirring, a resting and awakening all at once.
Each night, we dined on the most beautiful meals prepared from scratch, utilizing entirely local ingredients, handmade by a chef who also happened to be a poetry enthusiast. We feasted on grilled nectarines and smoked brisket and rustic brown bread, heirloom tomatoes and bone marrow butter and potatoes sprinkled with dill and a variety of coriander only available for a few weeks of the year. After dark, we talked and sang and roasted s’mores around a campfire that glowed blue and green, underneath the kind of sky I’ve found myself missing since Texas a year ago; every constellation coming out to play, the Big Dipper hanging low over the horizon and the swirling Milky Way mixing stardust and sending shooting stars streaking across the night.
And each morning, there were tea ceremonies and poetry discussions, writing sessions taught by the most pure-hearted poets from around the country, followed by copious stretches of free time to read and write and sunbathe and sketch and skinny dip in the pond, to wax poetic (literally) and dissect the words of Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye. Among the attendees there were writers and musicians, lawyers—both practicing and reformed—teachers, parents, retirees, new college grads, people between careers, people in love, people grieving, people starting over. We talked about magic and heartbreak and the future, where we’d come from, where we were going. There were deer and salamanders and soaring hawks, a nightly chorus of frogs crooning deep-bellied songs around the pond and a sparrow who made a nest for her babies in the underbelly of the canopy tent where we feasted and passed around bottles of wine. At night, a thick white mist descended over the valley like a tidal wave and dew clung to our skin, to our papers and books. On one late trek back from the farmhouse, I swore I saw a bright light, the outline of a person in the field where no one was standing.
The forecast had always promised rain, and on the third night it finally arrived. We watched as bruised purple clouds rolled over the valley, and absconded with our valuables, battened down the hatches of our tents and hoped for the best. We sought shelter in the farmhouse, filled with comfy couches and bookshelves of poetry, and watched as the heavens opened up over the valley below, thunder cracking and lightning illuminating all of the trees below like a cosmic floodlight. As the storm intensified, some people piled into cars and made a mad dash back down to the campsite to rescue what had been left, including, it turned out, my own composition notebook. I couldn’t even recall placing it down. It was handed to me waterlogged and soft, every word I’d written this summer running back to ink, as a fellow poet who’d become a sort of de facto Camp Dad squeezed my shoulders and assured me that it’d be okay, it would dry. As the storm continued, I prayed that the rain cover on the tent I’d bought from Amazon a few days before would keep what remained inside—mostly just what I needed to sleep that night—drier than my notebook.
And then for a few hours, there was nothing to do but wait. To play the candy-apple red keyboard that had been plugged in beneath a glittering gold disco ball in the living room, to sit cross-legged, knees touching, in intent discussion of everything from poetry and MFA programs to the breaking news of Kim and Pete’s dissolution as a couple. To salsa dance in the kitchen, to ask questions of a tarot deck and Magic 8 ball and drink red wine and stand on the porch soaking in the freshest air that had ever reached my lungs as rain dripped off the tin roof and ran back into the valley below. As fate would have it there were also two birthdays that night—one woman from Seattle, another from Staten Island (who was overjoyed at the Kim and Pete news)—and, amazingly, a third woman at midnight. As we stood circled along the walls of the wood-paneled living room to sing until our cheeks hurt and slice the sheet cake I’d run into the nearest town for a few hours before, I felt the surreality of being surrounded entirely by people I hadn’t known 48 hours prior, inside an amber-tinged bubble of warmth with an electric storm still raging outside. I felt briefly like I was in a movie, like I was watching someone else’s life play out before me. Like maybe something else was possible.
The “moonbow” we saw after the storm that night
At some point during the night, the rain finally ceased, and we made the trek down to see how our campsite had fared. After walking barefoot through the flooded fields—stopping for a moment to admire a faint “moonbow” visible in the inky sky—my hopes were not high. I quickly discovered that my tent had mostly not withstood the rain; the inside was flooded, leaving my sleeping bag and pillow more than a little wet. I was not alone in this fate, and both organizers and attendees quickly rallied together, laying out bearskin rugs and blankets on the floor of the farmhouse, offering up shelter in the house’s rooms and tents that had remained dry. Having consumed perhaps a glass of wine too many during our impromptu thunderstorm soiree, I tried my very best to keep my composure, but soon realized that I was hanging by a thread, that all I wanted to do was curl up in my sleeping bag and that the flooding of all the possessions I had with me was the straw that broke the camel’s back. For a good while, sprawled on the white farmhouse floorboards, I felt sorry for myself, for choosing to take a “vacation” that had turned into anything but. For the hardship of the past year, the heartache I still wore on my sleeve, for the realization that—despite the fact that I had accomplished nearly everything I’d ever set out to do—very few things in my life were currently what I expected.
As I felt my feet making contact with depths I’d tried very hard to avoid, I was fortunate to have something of a guardian angel that night, a new friend who stayed by my side as we walked to the farmhouse to dry all my waterlogged things in the laundry machine. A virtual stranger who let me sleep beside her in a tent draped in tarp and filled with books. A person who listened, unwaveringly, after I tried to sleep but realized there was no stopping the flood of emotions that had been bubbling beneath the surface all year and now came pouring out, late into the night. Someone who heard my voice as I talked about how I could not reach the one person I wanted to, needed to, that night, about how it felt like my heart lived outside my body and that my entire life was falling apart. About how my dad, like hers, had died several years ago in a way that was sudden and complicated and offered no space for goodbyes. How everything that had ever broken my heart managed to break it just a little bit still. How my life had gone exactly as I planned and how sometimes that was the saddest thing in the world. I cried until there was nothing left, until I fell asleep to the chorus of bellowing frogs and the sound of a guitar drifting from the campfire that some enterprising members of the group had managed to bring forth, even from the flood. Until the night finally gave way to damp and quiet darkness.
Over the course of the five days of camp, I talked at least a little bit with almost every attendee. Each one had a story; a former military veteran, a juggler, a single parent, a one-time sommelier. Many people had lost parents, or siblings, or close friends. A few of them had left this life by choice. We talked a lot about grief and sensitivity, about what it means to be a writer and a poet and to walk through the world feeling everything. There was a heaviness, a visceral understanding that life and death are two sides of the same coin, but permeating through virtually every moment there was also a feeling of joy, liberation, communication, of shared experience. Talking with near-strangers about things I’d never told my family or closest friends. Feeling, for perhaps the first time in my life, a slipping of the mask. A space to be vulnerable, messy, sad, hopeful, authentic to a fault. To truly inhabit my over-needing, all-feeling self among people who felt the same way, too.
From The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
The morning after the great storm, as the sun rose mercifully, my new friend and I hiked to an adjacent campsite and a secret pond, with water even clearer and cooler than the one we’d been swimming in at the main campsite. Having shared how we’d both struggled with our body image for as long as we could remember, in an act of rebellion, a rebel yell of aliveness after the night we’d been through, we stripped down and went skinny dipping. Felt free. Time seemed to stop. Even as my heart still ached and my mind raced with a million thoughts, for that blissful stretch of time nothing else mattered but the sun sparkling on the water, the breeze through the trees, the fat cattails and soft mud beneath my feet. I saw, after the rain, the rest of my life coming into focus. The chapter after the one it feels like I’ve been living forever. The vast expanse of possibility.
On the very last night, poetry camp culminated with a talent show. Though it was not something I could have imagined doing a year or even a month ago, I didn’t need much convincing to sign up to perform—I didn’t want to leave with any regrets. I knew it was now or never, that if anywhere was a safe space in which to share my poetry, it was this one. So on a cabin porch that had been makeshifted into a stage, by the glow of the fire and under the bright August stars, my hands shook and my voice stumbled over a few lines but I read two of my poems; one I’d written during the camp, and another earlier in the summer. Despite an initial warm reception, as other poets—and singers and musicians and dancers and spoken-word artists—performed, I was sure with each one that my writing had been lost and long-forgotten among the other talent. But afterward, as the group chattered and congratulated one another and asked about each performance, people thanked me for my writing, told me how deeply it had spoken to them, how they related to it, wanted to read it. I felt overcome with happiness—without a hint of ego or pride—and a feeling that I had arrived in a safe harbor. That this, in a way, was home.
It was a freeing, humbling, affirming experience, and I realized how few times in my life I’d felt safe to share myself creatively, to speak truthfully. In high school, college, in my career, there was always fear of judgment. That I was cringey, too earnest, uncool. That I was doing things “wrong.” That it was unprofessional to be vulnerable. That I was not technically skilled or professionally trained or intuitively talented enough. Here, though, there were no wrong answers. I realized after my performance, and in the depths of that great storm, and in all of the events of the past year of my life, that without vulnerability, without honesty, without wanting to share and be apart of the human experience, earnestly and completely, we have nothing. We are differentiated by our ability to share and create and tell the truth, and without it we are nothing, no different than stardust and atoms and the earth we’ll be again someday.
The next morning, after a final breakfast eaten on the farmhouse porch overlooking the valley, one last reading of an ode to the camp, a million hugs and thank yous and goodbyes, we reluctantly began the drive back to New York City, and I vowed not to let the magic and happenstance and energy I’d experienced here fade in the rearview mirror. While my weekend, much like my summer, was not a vacation, as I basked in the afterglow I knew that not every trip would be. Not even every season, or every year. That we are constantly traversing peaks and valleys. And in that experience I was tested emotionally, and physically, and spiritually. I was forced to confront things I’d been outrunning. I was given the space, and the grace, to feel everything I needed to feel.
I’d like to believe that things fall apart to come together again better, that I will have walked through fire to find Eden on the other side. I wish I could shake a Magic 8 ball and receive definitive answers from the universe. Do I stay or do I leave? Do I hold on or do I let go? Sometimes, though, the silence, the emptiness, the dark beyond the dark, offers its own answers. Sometimes there is grace, sometimes all we can do is be still and know. Because in the hollow, lonely space where everything we believed we knew about ourselves once resided, when the false gods and fallacies and everything that is not meant for us has been vanquished, that is where all we are left with is the truth—inescapable, everlasting, the beginning of everything.
The tarot card I pulled during the storm: The Popess, the High Priestess. “She shows up in your Tarot readings when the veil between you and the underworld is thin, and you have the opportunity to access the knowledge deep within your soul. Now is the time to be still so you can tune in to your intuition. The answers you are seeking will come from within, from your deepest truth and ‘knowing’.”
If you’ve read this far, thank you for being here, and I hope you are able to do at least one thing, very soon, that makes you feel truthful and honest and seen. Something that feels like a favorite poem, or rainbow after a storm, or maybe like this song, sitting somewhere between comfort and chaos.
With love and light and oh-so-many feelings,
Liv