In Praise of Dixie: Everyday Magic, Day 1,045
When Dixie Lubin lowered her reading glasses from the top of her head and opened her notebook to read, everyone in the room leaned forward, ready to take in every word.
I witnessed this for over 35 years, from the first time Dixie traded me a turquoise and purple altar for a writing workshop, then through all the Brave Voice retreats I co-led with Kelley Hunt. Dixie, who yesterday flew free from years of suffering from alzheimer's, was a writer like fish are swimmers. She was an artist in just about all media you could imagine and many you can't imagine, not the least of which how she lived her life. A wild woman bodhisattva with a propensity for baking and making things, she communed with her daring and genius in words and images, creating great art and poetry as well as nurturing enduring community.
She considered herself, rightfully too. an outsider artist who loved creating with a wild ferocity but never fit into any boxes, except the ones she made (like the chocolate boxes she repurposed by filling each slot with sculpey breasts, penises, and other genitalia). When you opened something Dixie created, you never knew what you would get. Her magic was feral and unfettered even as she presented as the sweetest grandma this side of heaven.
I'm not sure when we found each other in the big vat of hippie soup that was Lawrence, Kansas back in the day. But there was surely a moment when we recognized each other as old friends who loved one other deeply and "got" each other fully.
Then again, hundreds of people likely had such moments with Dixie because she had an uncanny ability to be completely present, curious, and loving. She looked deeply into my eyes (and yours and yours), listened, spoke and laughed with ease, and particularly made space to be with children. No wonder she taught children in many ways and the last great love of her life was being with her twin granddaughters.
Her life story was almost as vivid as her imagination, but then again, the seemingly impossible was often true in her experience. I remember her stories of what she called "skimming," running down a Wichita street as a child, lifting off, and flying for a few feet. I have no doubt this happened.
After listening to Dixie -- along with the late, great Kat Green and very much alive and amazing Nancy Hubble -- talk about their lives, my daughter Natalie told me, "Whatever crazy things my generation thinks it's done is nothing compared to these women." Experience -- and the rendering of subsequent insights, shadows, and delights -- imbued what Dixie had to say and write with technicolor detail.
When I started offering community writing workshops in 1992, Dixie was there, and thankfully, kept being there. Her poetry was prolific but money was the opposite in her household, so we bartered, which was to my advantage. Her art is on my walls and in my heart. She also traded art classes with our oldest son Daniel when he was a young and really needed more support. When I dropped him off, he would race to her studio to make vividly designed drawings. When I picked him off, Dixie and Daniel would be happily ensconced on the couch, watching Betty Boop cartoons and eating cupcakes.
Every Brave Voice she attended (starting in 2007), she told us, was a high point of her life because she could completely immerse herself in writing, music, art, and the living earth that danced with her beautiful spirit. At her last Brave Voice in 2022, her alzheimer's had already taken enough hold that sometimes she needed redirection back to her pen and pad or out to the picnic table to draw something in wind and birdsong. But she was, as she was most of the times I got to be with her, joyful and grateful.
That's because her sheer presence, let alone what she opened her notebook to read, imbued each converseation, class, and retreat with Dixie-ness: a potent mix of calm, surprise, attention, freedom, desire, exuberance, sadness, and tenderness, all speaking directly to reality. She told the truth with no holds barred;
At the moment Dixie died yesterday, I was facilitating a writing workshop on Zoom. I also couldn't stop thinking about Dixie at that time, but then again, Dixie had a way of crossing through worlds, tapping us on the shoulder, and smiling with such love we knew everything, even if falling apart, was also okay. I picture her waving and throwing a kiss -- like the picture above -- to all those she loved, and then skimming the earth to explore what's next. Meanwhile, we carry her love in us.
Then again, she could say this better, and she did in this poem -- part of her marvelous collection, Poetry for People: Fifty Years of Writing:
MY WORK IS LOVING
No more, no less
Often an uphill battle
Given the whole of the human
Condition, hardest of course
Is loving the self
Looking in mirrors all around you
At your own grave imperfections
Your old-lady whiskers, fat belly
Completely unacceptable fantasies
Your mistakes and mishaps surrounding
You like a grey mist
But a day comes when you look in
Not out, and see your own radiant self
Pure as any other and with tears and joy
You forgive yourself, deeply accept yourself
And suddenly become a channel, a Vessel
That love can effortlessly pass through
My work is loving, only judgment gets in the way
My art, my writing go through the intricate
Rituals of each day but really there is nothing
Nothing left to do, nowhere to be, except here— Now!
Sending and receiving, pulsing with awareness
Of our true nature here on earth, our destiny
What we can give back to creation
Every day!
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