Lois Smith: The Waking
"Anger is such a waste of who we are and what we can do. So little time. So much to do. To love. To share."
So many people are attempting to lift themselves up, through affirmations and memes on social media. We all do it, if only as a reminder to focus on the positive, to weed out the chaff and the shit that permeate the blather offered by so many.
Thousands took a break from beating up on people they found distasteful (in their personal lives, in popular culture, or those they’ve never met), to mourn the death of Flaco, an owl that broke free and roamed New York City for a time, the beautiful bandit so many hoped would land on their window sills. I thought instead of the photograph of a woman on West 79th Street, yelling at and pouring a bottle of water on a homeless man, while wearing a T-shirt with a photo of Flaco and the statement “Come to Me, Flaco.” The photograph captured us so well right now. Pine for and romanticize what will never be yours, but ignore or abuse the fellow human who needs your sympathy and help. #PeopleToday
I envy the angry sometimes: They appear to have so much free time. Where are their deadlines? Their mad rushes to turn in work or pay some bills or tend to friends and family? I assume they have some access to these things, opportunities, but there they are, consistently, raging against someone who wrote something, produced something, achieved something. The person who succeeds is the person who must be ridiculed, diminished, and these people, pixels overflowing, vessels of acid, find their small audiences, equally unread, unproduced, unheralded, applauding.
We turn to quotes, to literature, to films, art, but the best place to turn is to a person who lives the life our quotes might take us toward.
I have Lois Smith.
Lois Smith is ninety-three years old and is almost always out and about, seeing people and things. I envy her energy. I envy her balance.
I met Lois in 1990, when she was about to open on Broadway in the Steppenwolf production of Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Lois lived in my neighborhood, and I walked up to her and asked for an interview. I knew that Tennessee Williams had loved her. We have been friends ever since. Friendship comes easily to Lois, and she holds it dearly.
“You worry too much,” she often tells me. She is not wrong. Lois is aware of evil, but she also knows it has its place—away from her. Is her secret having grown up doing plays in a church? Was a particular faith implanted in her? “I don’t know,” she told me. “I think I know what is real. I think we all have this gift. I don’t think we all use it. Fear is fun for some. Anger. I have known so many people who thrive on anger, revenge, grievance. I’m terrified by it. Distance—becoming distant—is a gift.”
During one particularly trying time, Lois quoted to me a poem by Theodore Roethke, then delivered an anthology containing all of his work. “Hold on to these,” she told me.
The poem:
THE WAKING
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Much like Marian Seldes and Frances Sternhagen, two mentors I have lost, Lois knows where to go, how to get there. “More than anything, I am disappointed by anger, cruelty. I may react, but it’s sadness eventually. Anger is such a waste of who we are and what we can do. So little time. So much to do. To love. To share.
“Learn by going where to go.”