Generosity in Ten Movements
In which I assess and contemplate moments this week that made me feel “the quality or fact of being plentiful or large,” including a memory of the larger-than-life Michael K. Williams.
Each week in Bodrum, Turkey I become a giant.
Before my friend Maya steps on stage for a weekly music residency across the world, her music video is projected on a jumbo screen. As I star in the video as an art nerd (clearly a massive fiction, don’t know how she came up with that one…), every week, I too, become larger than life for the length of the song. How wild and strange.
I love this anecdote as a metaphor for generosity, which is different from simply taking up space — rather, generosity is a way to be expansive, saturated with the energy of genuine offerings, the kind that come from your own passions and curiosities, an abundance that allows others around you to become larger, too and then, to transmit that potential to others, and so on, and so on.
I’m thinking this week about the ways my friends and family (and a few non-human entities) inspire me to be more generous, more fearless, larger, more plentiful. In other words: instructions for living n’ giving.
And so: Generosity in Ten Movements:
1. The generosity of attention and reciprocity:
In response to my very first blog post, my friend CT, complete in cool ass shades, recorded a 4 minute video of himself in conversation with various parts of my writing. He was noticing in response to my noticing, making connections between my favorite flower the hibiscus and the bittersweet bite of that deep magenta drink in his fridge! Sitting in Guadalajara, where he spends part of the year, I got a sunny catch up on everything from his own grief journey to a bout of momentary illness in Tijuana.
On the heels of the video arrived a short voice memo inviting me to answer the question he’d picked up from another poet friend, “what is your heart wearing today?”
I chose a pink boa.
2. The generosity of goofiness:
Of course, I should also share a different generosity offered the night before when CT sent a brief video of himself talk-singing along to “Miss You,” the Rolling Stones song, complete with the pinky-thumb phone gesture to illustrate the lyrics to myself and two of our shared friends.
Been waitin’ on your call /
Your phone rings
3. The generosity of an un-boring text message:
Here are a few text messages that brought me joy in this specific way. I’m wearing the blue.
Christina and I in a funhouse of LOL:
My dad sending my sister and I a little mountain narrative of this greedy little woodpecker getting high on sugar:
4. The generosity of portraiture:
Anne offered up this vision of a “parallel universe Caits” wearing very expensive jewelry while practicing for a gig and she sure did make me look like an old fashioned movie starlet.
The best story to describe Anne: while visiting her mother-in-law, she used a left behind stash of the makeup brushes to paint a broad-stroked nature scene and texted it to me. Just radiant — the action of it all.
5. The generosity of grief as a form of love:
Resting in the shade of a generous tree on the largest lawn hugging the Hudson River, my friend Nelly shared, tears streaming through a gentle smile, about her friend Caroline. I had asked her to tell me about the friend who’d taken her own life last year, wanting to better understand my own friend through her love—and grief.
Many loving adjectives were shared, but I was most taken by this expression: Nelly coveted the bags under her friend’s eyes. Caroline hated them, considered them pesky imperfections, but Nelly dropped her shoulders down in exasperation with a big laugh, throwing her palms up, then give them to me!
Sighing the word gorgeous out, I could feel how true this was. Nelly really, really loved the dark circles that served as a frame for Caroline’s eyes—almond-shaped, “some of the most beautiful eyes in the world.”
Now those eyes appear as large and blue as the sky in Nelly’s dreams. In the spirit world, Caroline’s eyes are different, but just as beautiful. They were always bright, languid, inviting. Now, they are wide open.
6. The generosity of a well-placed smiley face:
7. The generosity of sharing one’s gifts:
It’s a very fun life when you get to hear a friend’s voice unexpectedly in between television episodes. I’m so proud of my girl Honey. Way to take an opportunity and make an impact in a matter of seconds. I can’t stop listening to the 30 second loop and smiling.
8. The generosity of collaboration:
A new weekend excursion: to the flower shop, where The Jazz and I pick out a bundle of flowers to each create our own bouquets.
In a living room filled with the lull of gentle smoke and Hypnotic Brass, I arranged and rearranged until I stumbled together the lines of color and texture that held the most energy, joy and life.
When I felt ready, I drew to the book shelves and pulled the spines with colors that matched the flowers, fashioning a stand for my creation.
Now here’s where it gets good. The photo on its own looked… bland. The Jazz pulled a poster out of the stack on the studio shelves, an ombre palette that picked up on the bouquet’s yellows and pinks.
Can I frame it in painter’s tape? I asked but wasn’t really asking.
I wouldn’t, The Jazz said, but then, once it was in motion, he revised his thinking: oh, yes, you’re right.
We played with yellow foam for a 2D vase until we landed on the simple bowl shape. Find a poem in the spines, The Jazz said, and my insides lit up like a Christmas tree.
9. The generosity of nerves:
On the bike path, I had to do a double take because I swore I saw Michael K. Williams.
Of course, it was just a look alike from afar. Up close, the man, though also quite beautiful, lacked that exquisite scar that carved Williams’s face into two distinct but related pieces.
An hour later I opened my phone to a text from my friend Sam that Williams died. He was found dead in his apartment.
I remembered that Sam had recently seen Williams on his bike, just a few weeks ago, across the city in Red Hook, describing him as a cool breeze of a shadow crossing in front of the big pink Brooklyn sun.
Sam and I, in our old teaching lives, had the opportunity to meet the always-kind Williams more than once. My favorite memory, and one I have often recounted to friends with great laughter, is set in a high school auditorium over ten years ago. Williams was the keynote speaker for graduation that year, and—with heart—he was winging it. More than once he used an old school term unfamiliar to the generation in their grad caps, most poignantly, “kids, don’t fall for the okey-doke,” (said twice without definition, to which I heard one student whisper to another, “what’s an okey-doke?”), and gave a brief but inspired interlude on healthy dating (“men, treat your women right”), to which a few moms in the crowd pursed their lips and mmmm hmmm’ed in response.
I always wished I graduated high school, Williams continued on to say and a little chuckle erupted in my heart. Were we to believe that Chalky White, that Omar Mutha Fuckin’ Little would rather have chosen a straight n’ narrow path over the one that lead to such a rich tapestry of not only fame, but highly juicy and iconic, landscape-shifting roles?
Turns out, perhaps, yes.
Looking back now, my heart aches at Williams’s sincerity. After exiting stage, with wide eyes he asked, “how did I do?”
Was he sweating?
I took his hand in mine and said, “you did great.”
I was comforting him, sure. But it was great, in that it was real, which made it memorable. It was great that Williams took seriously these teens —who weren’t the type to apply to a specialized high school and ended up, somehow, on 50th and 11th after traveling from the ends of the Bronx and Brooklyn — enough to feel nervous in their presence, to want to deliver some meaningful nugget of well-lived truth.
What else could Williams speak to but both his own extraordinary and difficult experiences? What else could he offer but the specific wisdom that had found him in his very specific life?
In short, his lessons were: Stay aware and discerning, be good to the people you love, and put some stock in your commitment to learning.
It is hard to believe Williams will never be in another film or television show or on another stage. I miss him terribly already.
10. The generosity of public learning:
And finally, I will share with you the great generosity of the woman I saw practicing tightrope on the bike path, wire rigged up between two trees. The generosity was with herself! When bounced off the rope, she gently twirled onto the ground, laughing. In response, I laughed, too!
