Dear Reader, I am remembering my commitment to my nineteen-year-old younger self. I share her story in her words. It is a story of courage as well as confusion. She is imperfect and deeply damaged. I hurt for her yet I remember that there is nothing to fix. I am so proud of what she was able to fashion as she slowly recovered from the events of her nineteenth year. The trials that she endured informed her willingness to learn to think differently.
She reads from chapter thirteen in the gift book given to her by the doctor:
It is my belief that each personality does already
have a quiet center within, which is never disturbed,
and is unmoved, like the mathematical point
in the very center of a wheel or axle which remains stationary.
What we need to do is to find this quiet center
within us and retreat into it periodically for
rest, recuperation, and renewed vigor.
I am in my small room in this tiny apartment. In front of me, arced across the mattress, are the contents of the manilla envelope. I look in disbelief at the marks made by Alice’s hand. Here is proof. I never would have imagined that Alice thought about me after I left The Farm.
The evidence is here before my eyes. I don’t have to wonder if this time of ‘All is Well’ ever happened. Alice has written. The envelope holds her letter, plus four typed pages containing her word poems, along with four white sheets of paper containing vibrant abstract ‘watercolor poems.’
Cover Page, Letter from Alice Twitchell, 1968
My First Letter from Alice Twitchell, 1968
It Was Felled, Alice Twitchell
Alice Twitchell, watercolor poem, 1965
Alice Twitchell, watercolor poem, 1965
I read her words. I breathe in her colors reaching me from the distant land of ‘All is Well’.
I take her words in a second and then a third time. I feel her presence. I hear her. She is speaking directly to me. I wipe away tears of joy. Her words: a poem just for me. She is once again saying things that I do not pretend to understand. I hold this paper in my hand. She has sent this message to me. Just to me. I read her entire letter, this gift of words, once more:
Donna Donna Donna
Dear Lovely beautiful
Donna.
Tis my turn to thank you and also to thank that Unknowable Beyond Our Knowledge God which gave us both, Life…on whose path we walk towards Life…Your gracious and penetrating letter plumbed the heights of my depths! How about that for a paradoxical impossibly feminine construction?!
We learned anew, deep truths anew! You and I!
Man changes…man becomes Man, girl becomes woman and woman becomes WOMAN! Our humanity is potentially, no more than that! It must become high, Donna, higher than the angels, for so it is decreed!
Our Lord Jesus Christ so said…and others as well… I am thanking Him for the gift of you _ and _ since I first saw you; your lovely self has firmly imprinted its image upon my heart, my inmost heart!
Yes, you will never leave the farm…always I’ll look up to see your piquant face and slender strong figure, your eyes with the depths of the High Ones shining through their lustrous grays…and wherever you walk, I’ll be with you…my strength is vast, and From Beyond, for without Him I am empty, a nothing _ but O my path is that razor-sharp Path…He helps me to be strong. So take from me what you will _ I know that you will use it wisely. We rejoice at your gift of yourself _ it gives us joy, deep as well as sweet.
Lovingly yours,
Alice
August 21, 1968
Thank you for writing _ thank you _ Please let me know where you are as you follow where your special star leads you!
Alice has found me. Her words act as a lifeline. I am lifted away from this place and settled back into my apple tree, looking out on the meadow and the moving white cloud of sheep.
I am reminded that ‘All is Well.’
I have never received a letter such as this. I have not been spoken to in this way. I feel her truth. I feel my lie. How could Alice see me so differently than I see myself? How could she say these things … to me?
There is beauty here. I have no right to receive such beauty. I do not deserve this message. And yet I read what she says, I hear her voice. I feel the urge to ‘Yes!’ I truly do want to let her know where my special star takes me. What can this mean? I am yearning to discover what waits for me:
“take from me what you will _ I know that you will use it wisely.”
The Way of Life, The Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu given to me by the Manager is my constant companion.
Verse 47
There is no need to run outside
For better seeing,
Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide
At the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart and see
If he is wise who takes each turn:
The way to do is to be.
These gifts from The Farm are tangible. I can hold them in my hand. They carry me to the center of All is Well. I hold the feeling. I close my eyes. I can see and breathe in the aroma of The Farm and its atmosphere, the sensation of that other-worldly air.
I am learning that I can travel in my mind and find beauty. I can be 12-years-old and creekside in John Muir woods with my sweet boy, Tippy. I can time travel. I can transport myself to sit in Alice’s garden. I can watch grasshoppers pop about on the warm mulch, I can rest pond-side following the dip and darting of dragonflies. I am back in her kitchen. I see her exquisite marble sculptures surrounded by the large leaves in the indoor tropical garden. I am able to watch her move her hand confidently over the paper as she paints.
She paints poems.
This thread carries me back to the promise that I made to my unborn last spring while we were hidden in the widow’s bungalow. Before he came into the world and before I was made to leave him behind I spoke aloud and made a pledge. I wonder where he is. Who is caring for him? I vow again to keep my promise. One day there will be reason to be proud.
Alice sends me her thoughts. She helps me to imagine what is possible … I close my eyes and wonder where my special star is. I wonder where it will lead me. The first thing that I see is the sense of art-home that she has created. I imagine what it will feel like when I find my studio/home. I tell myself that I will feel like ‘All is well.’ I will feel like being in the Alice Wonder Land.
The book that the doctor gave me is open on the floor beside my bed. I read every morning. I read before I sleep. Chapter thirteen contains this poem by Thomas Carlye …
in a period of deep spiritual despair _
“My lodestars were blotted out; in the canopy of grim fire shone no star
… The universe was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam engine,
rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb:
Then, in the midst of this spiritual bankruptcy, came a new way of life.
“And I asked myself, ‘What art thou afraid of?
Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper,
and go cowering and trembling. Despicable biped!
What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee?
Death? Well, Death: and say the pangs of Tophet too
and all that the Devil and man may, will or can do against thee!
Hast thou no heart; canst thou not suffer whatso it be:
as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample
Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee?
Let it come, then: I will meet and defy it!’
“And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul;
and I shook base Fear away from me forever.
I was strong, of unknown strength, a spirit, almost a god.
Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed:
not Fear or whining Sorrow was it,
but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.”
The author writes:
… Carlyle is telling us how we can maintain an aggressive, goal-directed, self-determining attitude even in the presence of very real and serious threats and dangers.
I want to learn. I especially want to learn how to become goal-directed. I want to genuinely learn to be self-determining. I want to discover the attitude that will allow me to follow my special star.
I hear Alice speak:
So take from me what you will _ I know that you will use it wisely. We rejoice at your gift of yourself _ it gives us joy, deep as well as sweet.
I drift into the landscape of my wonder land dreams.
yes, we bring people into our lives for a reason, as awful or as wonderful they might be.
Hi, Karen ~ True that. Even though there is nothing to fix in this story … I still wish that the developing brain of this nineteen-year-old kid could have had that awareness.
It seems almost that you conjure what and who you need to become whole. Truly, you are manifesting a mentor and mother and the pathway towards redemption. I’m glad you and BD saw her again. What was your adult impression I wonder.
Thank you, Lynn.
Your comment is beautiful. Yes, Alice was like a conjuring. She was like a manifestation.
She became a mentor and a mother. The relationship spanned 26 years until her sudden death … in a car accident … took her in 1994.
My adult impression of Alice, as an artist and human being, was a steady presence exploring and standing for the highest values and the deepest love for life.
What a powerful, positive force Alice is here. She is a magical figure in your story. An enviable fairy god mother who calls you towards a different world than you have fallen into in your wounded state. Yet what is as remarkable to me as Alice’s letter and art work, what strikes me with its absence, is what we don’t see–that is, the letter that YOU wrote to Alice. Your younger self appears to give herself no credit in this two way love affair of like souls. This isn’t a criticism but rather an observation. No doubt there was a return address on the envelope, yet the 19 year old seems to think it’s a miracle that Alice found her. Whatever your 19 year old self wrote in that letter to Alice, “plumbed the heights” and penetrated the depths of its recipient. You called Alice to you. Your voice called out for the generous, gorgeous, loving, encouraging answer that you received. If only we had those words to ponder. If we could read what the 19 year old writer had to say. Wouldn’t that be something. There’s more to the 19 year old than she is willing to share with us. How wonderful that she trusted enough in Alice to sing a little bit of her young song.
Dear Donna ~
Indeed. If only. There is no awareness within the nineteen-year-old of writing to Alice.
Upon leaving The Farm the girl disassociates. She drifts for some time. She is in an in-between state. Somewhere in those lost days, she has written to thank Alice. What did she say that “plumbed the heights”?
That young girl coming into Alice’s life served as a lifeline for her, just as Alice does for the nineteen-year-old.
I did not learn the most important part of her story until 1992. BD and I visited Alice and Larry in New Mexico. They lived in Abiquiu on the Rio Grande.
At our campfire on the bank of the river, across from Georgia O’Keeffe’s white place, Alice told BD and me that when I arrived at The Farm in July 1968 she was deeply grieving the death of her 18-year-old daughter, killed six months earlier in a car crash.
It truly would be something to have a magic mirror to see what the nineteen-year-old, who had lost so much herself, wrote (to that grieving mother) that created a bond that grew stronger through the years.
So wonderful to know that that relationship grew. Your 19 year old had a way of inviting trust. Somehow. Even in her wounded, disassociated state. You were young and lovely, but there is something more to this 19 year old than that. Let’s see what she does next.
Yes, Donna, the relationship with Alice spanned decades.
Interesting, your comment regarding trust gives me pause.
In the story, she is deeply damaged, yet she has the two specific books. And now she has the letter. In combination, they seem to act as a talisman. She invests in what she has been given when so much has been taken away.
it felt as if Alice touched the magic lamp of you
and set free you and the genie within you
oh how wonderful to see and be seen
a gift for for both your younger self and Alice
Much love to you
Dear Renie ~ Thank you. I love that image of Alice touching the magic lamp of me. She truly did set me free. She was able to see me in a way that no one had ever done before and it gave me a reason to keep moving forward.
Read my reply to MM to learn what had happened in Alice and Larry’s life six months before I arrived on The Farm.
My impressions: “her willingness to think differently” – to be open to what nurtures and heals her… She knows that something must change within herself, to find a different way of seeing and being in the world…
And: Truly being seen by another (Alice), by someone she doesn’t really know helps her to find herself – her “center” (as well as the books) – “the gift of yourself” (as Alice wrote)… How wonderful that she said that to you! Very poetic. And what a dear friend she is – to know and see you in a way that no one else has… which ultimately helps your 19 year old self to see herself differently…
Beautiful really.
I agree, MM, for Alice to have written that letter to that young girl is exceptional.
Neither one of us knew the other’s story. We simply bonded.
I did not learn **** until 26 years later **** that Alice and Larry had lost their 18-year-old daughter in a car accident six months before I came to The Farm.