Sea Cloud Circle Sojourn

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Pay attention. Attention is vitality.” – Susan Sontag

Once upon a time, a poet and a painter embarked on an eight week sojourn. They drove in the rain out a two lane road to a tiny little undeveloped sea island on the Carolina coast, the one called Edisto, arriving finally at their rented rooms. On Sea Cloud Circle. The purpose of the pilgrimage was to capture and define those practices which sustain the creative spirit. They limited their reading, and chose only three books each to study, ones they thought would nurture their vision. The poet chose to re-read the memoir by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. The painter picked the memoir by Karen Armstong, The Spiral Staircase. Together, they re-read Poetics of Space by the amazing French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard.

Inspired by the writer, Susan Sontag, they tried to follow her advice. She taught her students this: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

That was three years ago. I now live on this sacred island, which is also the land of my ancestors. I am the painter, and the poet was Chuck Sullivan. The eight week retreat was so successful that it inspired me not only to keep painting, but to write everyday, to begin this blog, and to move here. There were more magical moments during this eight weeks than I can record on this one page, but the following principles are a few of the ones that we tested then, and which I now practice and believe are lasting and genuine tickets for keeping one’s creative spirit alive.

We wrote and I painted out on borrowed docks, and we gave away the work. Chuck taught the children free classes at the school. In return, we were showered with pounds of fresh shrimp and the open arms of the community. Not only did we awaken to ourselves and our artistic vision, but we made lasting friendships that continue to this day. The small watercolor below is of the house that still stands at Middleton Plantation on St. Pierre Creek, owned now by the very dear Caroline Pope Boineau.

Middleton/ C.Hutson-Wrenn 2006

The Lessons of Sea Cloud Circle

* Keep a journal and write three pages in longhand every morning upon waking (thank you, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and Vein of Gold)
* Walk three miles everyday (with eyes wide open)
* Practice Gratitude
* Make friends
* Give stuff away – for generosity of spirit
* Eliminate distraction (tv, especially the news)

The Sea Cloud Sojourn was pilgrimage, which Phil Cousineau defines as “poetry in motion, a winding road to meaning”. Edisto Island is often referred to as a sacred place. The word sacred originates from sacrifice. Living here sometimes requires some of that. Highway 174 is a winding sixteen mile path of a road from the Edisto bridge to the the ocean. A winding road to meaning. The experience of this sojourn was even more. So much more.

Home by another way. A sense of Place.

One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. – Gaston Bachelard

Aren’t we all looking for home? For that one place that wraps us up in familiarity and nurture, a place that will ‘wait up for us’ and take us in? Exactly like we are? My search was long and winding, exciting and heart wrenching. I am headed into honest territory today, inspired by the writing of Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love and The Last America Man. Her writing is dazzling, and has me talkin’ honest. This is the story of how I came to be right here, in the Carolina Lowcountry, happy as that black clam my Gullah neighbor, Fred, claims only he knows how to dig for out there in the pluff mud.

The quote above is by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, whose book The Poetics of Space explores home by talking about sea shells and turrets and our memories of childhood. He speaks of the irony of pulling away while staying rooted, which is no small feat. I am a grandmother now, a Nahna: lucky, thrilled, pinching myself happy at my blessing. I am also, deliriously and contentedly, home.

For what felt like forever, my driving desire was to get away from home, away from the Carolinas of my childhood, from tradition, from what I felt were narrow boundaries of propriety. As the third child in my family with four, I somehow had more permission to go, and as soon as I could get married legally, I did, the only way that I knew, then, to get outta town. I spent blue warm winters in the American tropics, where oranges and key limes grew in the yard, where exotic lizards as big as cats climbed in our backyard tree that bloomed with so many flowers in winter it looked like a giant orange umbrella. In subsequent years, hungry to taste and smell everything this world had to offer, I loved a Canadian photographer I met in Maine because he lived on a perch in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and could cook and set up camp, so I got to see Canada and Colorado under the stars. Another travelin’ man took me to dream islands: Martha’s vineyard, and to Baja, the spit of California, that in renegade fashion meanders into the Pacific. I made pilgrimage to Paris with a musician; and a travel writer, knowing my hunger, let me bring a brand new poet lover when cancellations opened at the last minute on his small tour to Italy, where we found a poem about lemons by Pablo Neruda posted on a wall in a lemon grove in Amalfi and where I found fragile hand blown, red, glass cherries to carry home on my lap to remind me of Venice, a place whose magic helped me to recognize the sheer power of one evocative place.

Mine was a rich and rewarding traveling life. Until I was stopped in my tracks. The sound of home was calling to me from a place whose fragrance and flavor echoed generations of my grandmothers and grandfathers and who lived where I do now. From those very traditions I shunned earlier in my life. I was ready to see, to embrace, to love the history and values that yes, are about continuity. But I see it all more clearly now for having gone away. I do not take it for granted and I am surely more flexible for all the challenges of change along the way. This history is fresh to me now; the traditions are my own.

Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer Prize winning Southern writer from Jackson Mississippi, wrote about knowing one place well. She lived and wrote all her life in the one house in a small town. Flannery O’Connor, whose work is also deeply dazzling, said to write about what you know, and she did just that, in Milledgeville Georgia, a small town (worth a pilgrimage). There is so very much to explore in this one very small place in the world, so rich in history, beauty, inspiration. Who knew that all I wanted was right here at home, all along? Ah, to have eyes to see and ears to hear! That is the blessing!

The Call to a Dream

Consciousness rejuvenates everything, giving a quality of beginning to the most everyday actions. – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Imagine…. being called to a place in your dreams. A call to sit in the little wooden boat like Winken Blynken and Nod, to sail, along two rivers flowing to their center, the sea.

It was early in May, four years ago. The dog and I were out under a midnight sky. The full moon had turned the wide smooth beach into a lavender mirror. I’d just arrived onto the island, a guest of friends. My beloved little long legged greyhound pup and I, after everyone had gone to bed, wandered the two blocks to the sea. The air was crisp and clear and the night sky reflected the deepest sea, but light from the moon so brightened our walk it seemed liked day. Beau was intoxicated with the freedom call he heard from the expanse of the pure, powdery sand, and he began to run circles, wider and wider ones, running faster and faster with all the beauty and elegance his miniature black stallioned body was born to do. It seemed like all taste and sight and smell and touch were quickened, the salt of the air, the sound of the waves rolling and crashing in regular rhythmic order, the light, the bright blue light. I sensed some very deep memory, of the past and the future and the here and now, not only my own childhood days by the ocean but also that of my ancestors who had been on these very shores, who had felt this same awe. It was an extraordinary experience of bliss, of knowing, of joy….of being fully alive. …of feeling so alive you could just sail on out to the great unknown. This was light in the dark for me. This was where I needed to be, the call was clear and profound.

That’s how the dream began. That was four years ago under a full moon. It is June now and the widget on my MacBook says the moon will be full again in a few days….I am packing boxes to move, finally, down to the little island the Indians called Edistowe, pronounced like those who have lived on the island a long time say it, with the access on the last syllable, STOW, the middle i sounding like two ee’s. The Island is just south of Charleston, a place with no stoplight or hotel or Starbucks. It sits between two rivers and the South Edisto was even called the River Jordan on maps from the 1600’s. My art supplies are boxed and my high speed internet is scheduled for installation – so far, no TV. My life will be in transition for the next couple of weeks, but hopefully I will be back to this blog with new energy.

There will be much to say in the summer about this new life, and the daily challenges and inspirations inherent in island life. Keep me in your prayers. For now, I feel I am blessed beyond measure! Here’s to dreams!